BL 2735 

.fll 

1820 
Copy 1 



APPENDIX 




TO THE 



OTirotagtral 22t*srfc0 



OF 



THOMAS PAINE, 



Hontrott : 

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY M. A. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET 



1820. 





TO THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER. 



Towards the latter end of last December, I received a letter 
from a venerable patriot, Samuel Adams, dated Boston, 
Nov. 30th. It came by a private hand, which I suppose 
was the cause of the delay. 1 wrote Mr. Adams an answer 
dated January 1st, and that I might be certain of receiving 
it, and also that I might know of that reception, I desired a 
friend of mine at Washington to put it under cover to some 
friend of his at Boston, and desire him to present it to Mr. 
Adams. The letter was accordingly put under cover while 
I was present, and given to one of the clerks of the Post- 
Office to seal and put in the mail. The clerk put it in his 
pocket-book, and either forgot to put it in the mail, or sup- 
posed he had done so among other letters. The Postmaster- 
General, on learning this mistake, informed me of it last 
Saturday, and as the cover was then out of date, the letter 
was put under a new cover with the same request, and for- 
warded by the post. I felt concerned at this accident, lest 
Mr. Adams should conclude I was unmindful of his atten- 
tion to me; and therefore, lest any further accident should 
prevent or delay his receiving it. as well as to relieve myself 
from that concern, I give the letter the opportunity of reaching 
him by the newspapers. I am the more induced to do this, 
because some manuscript copies have been taken of both let- 
ters, and therefore there is a possibility of imperfect copies 
getting into print; and besides this, if some of the Federal 
printers (for 1 hope they are not all base alike^ could get 
hold of a copy, tbey would make no scruple of altering it 
and publishing it as mine. I therefore send you the original 
letter of Air. Adams and my own copy of the answer. 

THOMAS PAINE, 

Federal City, Jan. 22, 1803. 



To Thomas Paine. 



Sir, Boston, Nov. 30th, 1S02. 

I have frequently with pleasure reflected on your services 
to my native, and your adopted country. Your Common 

a 2 



4 



TO THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER. 



Sense, and your Crisis, unquestionably awakened the public 
mind, and led the people loudly to call for a declaration of 
our national independence. I therefore esteemed you as a 
warm friend to the liberty and lasting welfare of the human 
race. But when I heard you had turned your mind to a de- 
fence of infidelity, 1 felt myself much astonished, and more 
grieved, that you had attempted a measure so injurious to 
the feelings, and so repugnant to the true interest of so great 
a part of the citizens of the United States. The people of 
New England, if you allow me to use a Scripture phrase, 
are fast returning to their first love. Will you excite among 
them the spirit of angry controversy at a time when they are 
hastening to unity and peace? I am told, that some of our 
newspapers have announced your intention to publish an ad- 
ditional pamphlet upon the principles of your Age of Rea- 
son. Do you think that your pen, or the pen of any other 
man, can unchristianize the mass of our citizens, or have you 
hopes of converting a few of them to assist you in so bad a 
We ought to think ourselves happy in the enjoy- 

nt of our opinion, without the danger of persecution by 
civil or ecclesiastical law. 

Our friend, the present President of the United States, has 
been calumniated for his liberal sentiments, by men who have 
attributed that liberality to a latent design to promote the 
cause of infidelity. This, and all other slanders have been 
made without a shadow of proof. Neither religion nor li- 
berty can long subsist in the tumult of altercation, and 
amidst the noise and violence of faction. 

Felix qui cautus. 

Adieu, 

SAMUEL ADAMS. 



To Samuel Adams. 



My dear and venerable friend, 

I received with great pleasure your friendly and affection- 
ate letter of Nov. 30th, and I thank you also for the frank- 
ness of it. Between men in pursuit of truth, and whose 
object is the happiness of man bo;h here and hereafter, 
there ought to be no reserve. Even error has a claim to in- 
dulgence, if not to respect, when it is believed to be truth. 



TO THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER. 



5 



I am obliged to you for your affectionate remembrance of 
what you style my services in awakening the public mind to 
a declaration of independence, and supporting it after it was 
declared. I also, like you, have often looked back on those 
times, and have thought, that if independence had not been 
declared at the time it was, the public mind coald not have 
been brought up to it afterwards. It will immediately occur 
to you, who were so intimately acquainted with the situation 
of things at that time, that I allude to the black times of 
seventy-six; for though I know, and you my friend also 
know, they were no other than the natural consequences of 
the military blunders of that campaign, the country might 
have viewed them as proceeding from a natural inability to 
support its cause against the enemy, and have sunk under 
the despondency of that misconceived idea. This was the 
impression against which it was necessary the country should 
be strongly animated. 

I now come to the second part of your letter, on which 
I shall be as frank with you as you are with me. " But (say 
you) when I heard you had turned your mind to a defence 
of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished," &c. What, 
my good friend, do you call believing in God infidelity? 
for that is the great point mentioned in the Age of Reason 
against all divided beliefs and allegorical divinities. The 
Bishop of Landaff (Dr. Watson) not only acknowledges 
this, but pays me some compliments upon it, in his answer to 
the second part of that work. " There is (says he) a philo- 
sophical sublimity in some of your ideas, when speaking of 
the Creator of the Universe." 

What then, (my much esteemed friend, for I do not respect 
you the less because we differ, and that perhaps not much, 
in religious sentiments) what, I ask, is the thing called infi- 
delity ? If we go back to your ancestors and mine, three 
or four hundred years ago, for we must have fathers and 
grandfathers or Ave should not have been here, we shall find 
them praying to saints and virgins, and believing in purga- 
tory and transu Instantiation ; and therefore, all of us are infi- 
dels according to our forefathers' belief. If we go back to 
times more ancient we shall again be infidels according to the 
belief of some other forefathers. 

The case, my friend, is, that the world has been overrun 
with fable and creed of human invention, with sectaries of 
whole nations, against other nations, and sectaries of those 
sectaries in each of them against each other. Every sectary, 
pt the Quakers, have been perseculor.s. Those who 



TO THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER. 



fled from persecution, persecuted in their turn, and it is this 
confusion of creeds that has filled the world with persecu- 
tion, and deluged it with blood. Even the depredation on 
your commerce by the Barbary powers, sprang from the 
crusades of the church against those powers. It was a war 
of creed against creed, each boasting of God for its author, 
and reviling each other with the name of infidel. If I do 
not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe 
as I believe, and this is all that it proves. 

There is, however, one point of union wherein all reli- 
gions meet, and that is in the first article of every man's 
creed, and of every nation's creed, that has any creed at all. 
/ believe in God. Those who rest here, and there are mil- 
lions who do, cannot be wrong as far as their creed goes. 
Those who choose to go further may be wrong, for it is im- 
possible that all can be right since there is so much contra- 
diction among them. The first, therefore, are, in my opi- 
nion, on the safest side, 

I presume you are so far acquainted with ecclesiastical 
history as to know, and the bishop who has answered me has 
been obliged to acknowledge the fact, that the Books that 
compose the New Testament, were voted by yeas and nays 
to be the Word of God, as you now vote a law, by the 
Popish Councils of Nice and Laodocia, about fourteen hun- 
dred and fifty years ago. With respect to the fact there is 
no dispute, neither do I mention it for the sake of contro- 
versy. This vote may appear authority enough to some, 
and not authority enough to others. It is proper, however, 
that every body should know the fact. 

With respect to the Age of Reason, which you so much 
condemn, and that, I believe, without having read it, for 
you say only that you heard of it, I will inform you of a 
circumstance, because you cannot know it by other means. 

I have said in the first page of the first part of that work, 
that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts 
upon religion, but that 1 had referred it to a later time of 
life. I have now to inform you why I wrote it and pub- 
lished it at the time I did. 

In the first place, I saw my life in continual danger. My 
friends w T ere falling as fast as the guillotine could cut their 
heads off, and as 1 expected every day the same fate, I re- 
solved to begin my work. I appeared to myself to be on my 
death bed, for death was on every side of me, and I had no 
time to lose. This accounts for my writing at the time I 
did, and so nicely did the time and intention meet, that I 



TO THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER. 



1 



bad not finished the first part of the work more than six 
hours, before I was arrested and taken to prison. Joel Bar- 
low was with me, and knows the fact. 

In the second place, the people of France were running 
headlong into atheism, and I had the work translated and 
published in their own language, to stop them in that career, 
and fix them to the first article (as I have before said) of 
every man's creed, who has any creed at all, I believe in 
God. It endangered my own life, in the first place, by op- 
posing in the Convention the execution of the King, and la- 
bouring to shew they were trying the monarch and not the 
man, and that the crimes imputed to him were the crimes of 
the monarchical system ; and endangered it a second time by 
opposing atheism, and yet some of your priests, for I do not 
believe that all are perverse, cry out, in the whar-whoop of 
monarchical priestcraft. What an infidel ! what a wicked 
man is Thomas Paine! They might as well add, for he be- 
lieves in God, and is against shedding blood. 

But all this war-whoop of the pulpit has some concealed 
object. Religion is not the cause, but is the stalking horse. 
They put it forward to conceal themselves behind it. It is 
not a secret that there has been a party composed of the 
leaders of the Federalists, for I do not include all Federalists 
with theirleaders, who have been working by various means 
for several years past, to overturn the Federal Constitution 
established on the representative system, and place govern- 
ment in the new world on the corrupt system of the old. To 
accomplish this a large standing army was necessary, and as 
a pretence for such an army, the danger of a foreign invasion 
must be bellowed forth, from the pulpit, from the press, and 
by their public orators. 

I am not of a disposition inclined to suspicion. It is in its 
nature a mean and cowardly passion, and upon the whole, 
even admitting error into the case, it is better, I am sure, it is 
more generous to be wrong on the side of confidence, than 
on the side of suspicion. But I know as a fact, that the 
English Government distributes annually fifteen hundred 
pounds sterling among the Presbyterian ministers in Eng- 
land, and one hundred among those of Ireland; and when I 
hear of the strange discourses of some of your ministers and 
professors of colleges, I cannot, as the Quakers say, find 
freedom in my mind to acquit them. Their anti-revolu- 
tionary doctrines invite suspicion, even against one's will, 
and in spite of one's charity to believe well of them. 

As you have given me one Scripture phrase, I wiil give 



8 



TO THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER. 



you another for those ministers. It is said in Exodus, 
chapter xxiii, verse 28, " Thou shalt not revile the Gods, 
nor curse the ruler of thy people." But those ministers, 
such I mean as Dr. Emmons, curse ruler and people both, 
for the majority are, politically, the people, and it is those 
who have chosen the ruler whom they curse. As to the first 
part of the verse, that of not reviling the Gods, it makes no 
part of my Scripture. I have but one God. 

Since I began this letter, for I write it by piece-meals as 
I have leisure, I have seen the four letters that passed be- 
tween you and John Adams. In your first letter you say, 
" Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite 
their endeavours to renovate the age by inculcating in the 
minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity, and univer- 
sal philanthropy" Why, my dear friend, this is exactly my 
religion, and is the whole of it. That you may have an 
idea that the Age of Reason (for I believe you have not 
read it) inculcates this reverential fear and love of the 
.Deity, 1 will give you a paragraph from it: 

" Do we want to contemplate his power ? We see it in the 
immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his 
wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the 
incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to con- 
template his munificence? We see it in the abundance with 
which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his 
mercy? We see it in his not withholding (hat abundance 
even from the unthankful." 

As I am fully with you in your first part, that respecting 
the Deity, so am I in your second, that of universal phi- 
lanthropy ; by which I do not mean merely the sentimental 
benevolence of wishing well, but the practical benevolence 
of doing good. We cannot serve the Deity in the manner 
we serve those who cannot do without that service. He 
needs no services from us. We can add nothing to eternity. 
But it is in our power to render a service acceptable to him, 
and that is not by praying, but by endeavouring to make his 
creatures happy. A man does not serve God when he prays, 
for it is himself he is trying to serve; and as to hiring or 
paying men to pray, as if the Deity needed instruction, it is 
in my opinion an abomination, One good school-master is 
of more use and of more value than a load of such parsons 
as Dr. Emmons, and some others. 

You, my dear and much respected friend, are now far in 
the vale of years; I have yet, I believe, some years in store, 
for I have a good state of health and a happy mind ; I take 



TO THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE. 



9 



care of both, by nourishing the first with temperance, and 
the latter with abundance. 

This, I believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy 
of life. You will see by my third letter to the citizens of 
the United States, that I have been exposed to, and preserved 
through, many dangers; but instead of buffeting the Deity 
with prayers, as if I distrusted him, or must dictate to him, 
1 reposed myself on his protection; and you, my friend, 
will find, even in your last moments, more consolation in the 
silence of resignation than in the murmuring wish of prayer. 

In every thing which you say in your second letter to 
John Adams, respecting our rights as men and citizens in 
this world, I am perfectly with you. On other points we 
have to answer to our Creator and not to each other. The 
key of heaven is not in the keeping of any sect, nor ought 
the road to it to be obstructed by any. Our relation to each 
other in this world is as men, and the man who is a friend 
to man and to his rights, let his religious opinions be what 
they may, is a good citizen, to whom I can give, as I ought 
to do, and as every other ought, the right hand of fellowship 
and to none with more hearty good will, my dear friend, 
than to vou. 

THOMAS PAINE. 

Federal City, Jan. 1, 1803. 



OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT. 



Akchbishop Tillotson says, " The difference between the 
style of the Old and New Testament is so very remarkable, 
that one of the greatest sects in the primitive times, did, upon 
this very ground, found their heresy of two Gods, the one 
evil, tierce, and cruel, whom they called the God of the Old 
Testameut ; the other was good, kind, and merciful, whom 
they called the God of the New Testament; so great a dif- 
ference is there between the representations that are given of 
God in the Books of the Jewish and Christian Religion, as 
to give, at least, some colour and pretence to an imagination 
of two Gods." Thus far Tillotson. 

But the case was, that as the Church had picked out se- 
veral passages from the Old Testament, which she most ab- 
surdly and falsely calls prophecies of Jesus Christ, (whereas 
there is no prophecy of any such person as any one may 
see by examining the passages and the cases to which 
they apply,) she was under the necessity of keeping up the 
credit of the Old Testament, because if that fell the other 
would soon follow, and the Christian system of faith would 
soon be at an end. Asa book of morals, there are several 
parts of the New Testament that are good ; but they are no 
other than what had been preached in the Eastern world se- 
veral hundred years before Christ was born. Confucius, 
the Chinese philosopher, who lived five hundred years be- 
fore the time of Christ, says, acknowledge thy benefits by the 
return of benefits., but never revenge injuries. 

The clergy in Popish countries were cunning enough to 
know, that if the Old Testament was made public, the fallacy 
of the New, with respect to Christ, would be detected, and 
they prohibited the use of it, and always took it away 
wherever they found it. The Deists, on the contrary, al- 
ways encouraged the reading it, that people might see and 
judge for themselves, that a Book so full of contradictions and 
wickedness, could not be the word of God, and that we dis- 
honour God by ascribing it to him. 



A TRUE DEIST. 



OF CAIN AND ABEL. 



The story of Cain and Abel is told in the fourth chapter of 
Genesis, Cain was the elder brother, and Abel the younger, 
and Cain killed Abel. The Egyptian story of Typhon and 
Osiris, and the Jewish story in Genesis of Cain and Abel, 
have the appearance of being the same story differently told, 
and that it came originally from Egypt. 

In the Egyptian story, Typhon and Osiris, Typhon is 
the elder, aud Osiris the younger, and Typhon kills Osiris. 
The story is an allegory on darkness and light; Typhon the 
elder brother is darkness, because darkness was supposed to 
be more ancient than light: Osiris is the good light, who 
rules during the summer months, and brings forth the fruits 
of the earth, and is the favourite, as Abel is said to have 
been, for which Typhon hates him ; and when the winter 
comes, and cold and darkness overspread the earth, Typhon 
is represented as having killed Osiris out of malice, as Cain 
is said to have killed Abel. 

The two stories are alike in their circumstances and their 
event, and are probably but the same story; what corrobo- 
rates this opinion, is, that the fifth chapter of Genesis histori- 
cally contradicts the reality of the story of Cain and Abel in 
the fourth chapter, for though the name of Seth, a son of 
Adam, is mentioned in the fourth chapter, he is spoken of in 
the fifth chapter as if he was the first-born of Adam. The 
chapter begins thus: — 

" This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the 
day that God created man, in the likeness of God created he 
him. Male and female created he them, and blessed them, 
and called their name i\dam in the day when they were 
created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years and 
begat a son, in his own likeness and after his own image, 
and called his name Seth.'''' The rest of the chapter goes on 
with the genealogy. 

Any body reading this chapter cannot suppose there were 
any sons born before Seth. The chapter begins with what 
is called the creation of Adam, and calls itself the book of 
the generations of Adam, yet no mention is made of such 



12 



OF CAIN AND ABEL. 



persons as Cain and Abel ; one thing, however, is evident on 
the face of these two chapters, which is, that the same per- 
son is not the writer of both ; the most blundering historian 
could not have committed himself in such a manner. 

Though 1 look on every thing in the first ten chapters of 
Genesis to be fiction, yet fiction historically told should be 
consistent, whereas these two chapters are not. The Cain 
and Abel of Genesis appear to be no other than the ancient 
Egyptian story of Typhon and Osiris, the darkness and the 
light, which answered very well as an allegory without 
being believed as a fact. 



ON DEISM AND THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE. 



The following reflections, written last winter, were occa- 
sioned by certain expressions in some of the public papers 
against Deisra and the Writings of Thomas Paine on that 
subject. 

" Great is Diana of the Ephesians" was the cry of the 
people of Ephesus ;* and the cry of " our holy religion" 
has been the cry of superstition in some instances, and of 
hypocrisy in others, from that day to this. 

The Brahmin, the follower of Zoroaster, the Jew, the 
Mahometan, the church of Rome, the Greek church, the 
Protestant church, split into several hundred contradictory 
sectaries, preaching, in some instances, damnation against 
each other, all cry out, " our holy religion.'" The Calvinist, 
who damns children of a span long to hell to burn for ever 
for the glory of God, (and this is called Christianity) and the 
Universalist, who preaches that all shall be saved and none 
shall be damned, (and this also is called Christianity) boasts 
alike of their holy religion and their Christian faith. Some- 
thing more, therefore, is necessary than mere cry and whole- 
sale assertion, and that something is TRUTH ; and as in- 
quiry is the road to truth, he that is opposed to inquiry is not 
a friend to truth. 

The God of Truth is not the God of fable ; when, there- 
fore, any book is introduced into the world as the word of 
God, and made a ground-work for religion, it ought to be 
scrutinized more than other books to see if it bear evidence of 
being what it is called. Our reverence to God demands 
that we do this, lest we ascribe to God what is not his, and 
our duty to ourselves demands it lest we take fable for fact, 
and rest our hope of salvation on a false foundation. It is 
not our calling a book holy that makes it so, any more than 
our calling a religion holy that entitles it to the name. 
Inquiry, therefore, is necessary in order to arrive at truth. 
But inquiry must have some principle to proceed on, some 
standard to judge by, superior to human authority. 

When we survey the works of creation, the revolutions of 
the planetary system, and the whole economy of what is 
called nature, which is no other than the laws the Creator 
has prescribed to matter, we see unerring order and univer- 



* Acts, chap. xix. ver. 28. 



14 



ON DEISM AND THE WRITINGS OF PAIN1S. 



sal harmony reigning throughout the whole. No one part 
contradicts another. The sun does not. run agaiust the 
moon, nor the moon against the sun, nor the planets against 
each other. Every thing keeps its appointed time and place. 
This harmony in the works of God is so obvious, that the 
farmer of the field, though he cannot calculate eclipses, is as 
sensible of it as the philosophical astronomer. He sees the 
God of order in every part of the visible universe. 

Here, then, is the standard to which every thing must be 
brought that pretends to be the work or word of God, and 
by this standard it must be judged, independently of any 
thing and every thing that man can say or do. His opinion 
is like a feather in the scale compared with the standard that 
God himself has set up. 

It is, therefore, by this standard, that the Bible, and all 
other books pretending to be the word of God, (and there 
are many of them in the world) must be judged, and not by 
the opinions of men or the decrees of ecclesiastical councils. 
These have been so contradictory that they have often re- 
jected in one council what they had voted to be the word of 
God in another; and admitted what had been before re- 
jected. In this state of uncertainty in which we are, and 
which is rendered still more uncertain by the numerous con- 
tradictory sectaries that have sprung up since the time of 
Luther and Calvin, what is man to do ? The answer is easy. 
Begin at the root — begin with the Bible itself. Examine it 
with the utmost strictness. It is our duty so to do. Com- 
pare the parts with each other, and the whole with the 
harmonious, magnificent order that reigns throughout the 
visible universe, and the result will be, that if the same Al- 
mighty wisdom that created the universe, dictated also the 
Bible, the Bible will be as harmonious and as magnificent in 
all its parts, and in the whole, as the universe is. But if in- 
stead of this, the parts are found to be discordant, contra- 
dicting in one place what is said in another, (as in 2 Sam. 
chap. xxiv. ver. 1. and 1 Chron. chap. xxi. ver. 1. where the 
same action is ascribed to God in one book and to Satan in 
the other), abounding also in idle and obscene stories, and 
representing the Almighty as a passionate, whimsical Being, 
continually changing his mind, making and unmaking his 
own works as if he did not know what he was about, we 
may take it for certainty that the Creator of the universe is 
not the author of such a book, that it is not the word of 
God, and that to call it so is to dishonour his name. The 
Quakers, w r ho are a people more moral and regular in their 



©N DEISM AND THE WRITINGS OF PAINE. 



15 



conduct than the people of other sectaries, and generally al- 
lowed so to be, do not hold the Eible to be the word of God. 
They call it a history of the fames, and a bad history it is, 
and also a history of bad men and of bad aetions, and 
abounding with bad examples. 

For several centuries past the dispute has been about doc- 
trines. It is now about fact. Is the Bible the word of God, 
or is it not? for until the point is established no doctrine 
drawn from the Bible can afford real consolation to man, and 
he ought to be careful he does not mistake delusion for truth. 
This is a case that concerns all men alike. 

There has always existed in Europe, and also in America, 
since its establishment, a numerous description of men, (I do 
not here mean the Quakers) who did not, and do not believe 
the Bible to be the word of God. These men never formed 
themselves into an established society, but are to be found ia 
all the sectaries that exist, and are more numerous than any, 
perhaps equal to all, and are daily increasing. From Deus* 
the Latin word for God, they have been denominated Deist.% 
that is, believers in God. It is the most honourable appella- 
tion can be given to man, because it is derived immediately 
from the Deity. It is not an artificial name like Episco- 
palian, Presbyterian, &c. but is a name of sacred significa- 
tion, and to revile it is to revile the name of God. 

Since then there is so much doubt and uncertainty about 
the Bible, some asserting, and others denying it to be the 
word of God, it is best that the whole matter come out. It 
is necessary, for the information of the world, that it should. 
A better time cannot offer than whilst the Government, pa- 
tronizing no one sect or opinion in preference io another., 
protects equally the rights of all ; and certainly every man 
must spurn the idea of an ecclesiastical tyranny, engrossing 
the rights of the press, and holding it free only for itself. 

Whilst the terrors of the Church, and the tyranny of the 
State, hung like a pointed sword over Europe, men were 
commanded to believe what the church told them, or go to 
the stake. All inquiries into the authenticity of the Bible 
■were shut out by the inquisition. We ought, therefore, to 
suspect that a great mass of information respecting the Bible 
and the introduction of it into the world has been suppressed 
by the united tyranny of Church and State, for the purpose 
of keeping people in ignorance, and which ought to be 
known. 

The Bible has been received by the Protestants on the 
■authority of the Church of B.ome, and on no other autlto- 



16 



ON DEISM AND THE WRITINGS OP PAINE. 



rity. It is she that has said it is the word of God. We do 
not admit the authority of that church with respect to its 
pretended infallibility, its manufactured miracles, its setting 
itself up to forgive sins, its amphibious doctrine of transub- 
stantiation, &c. ; and we ought to be Watchful with respect 
to any book introduced by her, or her ecclesiastical coun- 
cils, and called by her the Word of God; and the more so, 
because it was by propagating that belief and supporting it 
by fire and faggot, that she kept up her temporal power. 
That the belief of the Bible does no good in the world may 
be seen by the irregular lives of those, as well priests as 
laymen, who profess to believe it to be the word of God, 
and the moral lives of the Quakers who do not. It abounds 
with too many ill examples to be made a rule for moral life, 
and were a man to copy after the lives of some of its most 
celebrated characters, he would come to the gallows. 

Thomas Paine has written to shew that the Bible is not 
the word of God, that the books it contains were not writ- 
ten by the persons to whom they are ascribed, that it is an 
anonymous book, and that we have no authority for calling 
it the word of God, or for saying it was written by inspired 
penmen, since we do not know who the writers were. This 
is the opiniou, not only of Thomas Paine, but of thousands 
and tens of thousands of the most respectable characters in 
the United States and in Europe. These men have the same 
right to their opinions, as others have to contrary opiuions, 
and the same right to publish them. Ecclesiastical tyranny 
is not admissible in the United States. 

With respect to morality, the writings of Thomas Paine 
are remarkable for purity and benevolence; and though he 
often enlivens them with touches of wit and humour, he 
never loses sight of the real solemnity of his subject. No 
man's morals either with respect to his Maker, himself, or 
his neighbour, can suffer by the writings of Thomas Paine. 

It is now too late to abuse Deism, especially in a country 
where the press is free, or where free presses can be estab- 
lished. It is a religion that has God for its patron and 
derives its name from him. The thoughtful mind of man, 
wearied with the endless contentions of sectaries against 
sectaries, doctrines against doctrines, and priests against 
priests, finds its repose at last in the contemplative belief 
and worship of one God and the practice of morality, for 
as Pope wisely says, 

" He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.-" 



TO THE MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY, STYLING ITSELF 
THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 



The New York Gazette of the \6th (August) contains the 
following article — " On Tuesday, a Committee of the 
Missionary Society, consisting chiefly of distinguished 
Clergymen, had an interview at the City Hotel, with the 
Chiefs of the Osage tribe of Indians, now in this City, 
(New York) to whom they presented a Bible, together 
with an Address, the object of which was, to inform them 
that this good book contained the will and laws of the 
GREAT SPIRIT." 



It is to be hoped some humane person will, on account of 
our people on the frontiers, as well as of the Indians, unde- 
ceive them with respect to the present the Missionaries have 
made them, and which they call a good book, containing, they 
say, the will and laws of the GREAT SPIRIT. Can those 
Missionaries suppose that the assassination of men, women, 
and children, and sucking infants, related in the booksascribed 
to Moses, Joshua, &c. and blasphemously said to be done 
by the command of the Lord, the Great Spirit, can be edi- 
fying to our Indian neighbours, or advantageous to us? Is 
not the Bible warfare the same kind of warfare as the In- 
dians themselves carry on, that of indiscriminate destruc- 
tion, and against which humanity shudders, can the horrid 
examples and vulgar obscenity, with which the Bible 
abounds, improve the morals, or civilize the manners of the 
Indians? Will they learn sobriety and decency from drunken 
Noah and beastly Lot; or will their daughters be edified 
by the example of Lot's daughters? Will the prisoners they 
take in war be treated the better by their knowing the hor- 
rid story of Samuel's hewing Agag in pieces like a block 
of wood, or David's putting them uuder harrows of iron? 
Will not the shocking accouuts of the destruction of the 
Cauaauites when the Israelites invaded their country, sug- 
gest the idea that we may serve them in the same manner, 
or the accounts stir them up to do the like to our people on 
the frontiers, and then justify the assassination by the Bible 

B 



18 



TO THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 



the Missionaries have given them? Will those Missionary 
Societies never leave off doing mischief? 

In the account which this Missionary Committee give of 
their interview, they make the Chief of the Indians to say, 
that, " as neither he nor his people could read it, he begged 
that some good white man might be sent to instruct them." 

It is necessary the General Government keep a strict eye 
over those Missionary Societies, who under the pretence of 
instructing the Indians, send spies into their country to find 
out the best lands. No society should be permitted to have 
intercourse with the Indian tribes, nor send any person 
among them, but with the knowledge and consent of the 
Government. The present administration have brought the 
Indians into a good disposition, and are improving them in 
the moral and civil comforts of life; but if these self-created 
societies be suffered to interfere, and sesnd their speculating 
Missionaries among them, the laudable object of Govern- 
ment will be defeated. Priests, we know, are not remark- 
able for doing any thing gratis; they have, in general, some 
scheme in every thing they do, either to impose on the igno- 
rant, or derange the operations of Government. 

A FRIEND TO THE INDIANS. 



1 



OP THE SABBATH DAY OF CONNECTICUT. 



'The word, Sabbath, means rest, that is, cessation from la- 
bour ; but the stupid Blue Laws* of Connecticut make a 
labour of rest, for they oblige a person to sit still from sun- 
rise to sun-set on a Sabbath-day, which is hard work. Fa- 
naticism made those laws, and hypocrisy pretends to reve- 
rence them, for where such laws prevail hypocrisy will 
prevail also. 

One of those laws says, " No person shall run on a Sab- 
bath-day, nor walk in his garden, nor elsewhere, but reve- 
rently to and from meeting." These fanatical hypocrites 
forgot that God dwells not in temples made with hands, and 
that the earth is full of his glory. One of the finest scenes 
and subjects of religious contemplation is to walk into the 
woods and fields, and survey the works of the God of the 
Creation. The wide expanse of heaven, the earth covered 
with verdure, the lofty forest, the waving corn, the magnifi- 
cent roll of mighty rivers, and the murmuring melody of 
the cheerful brooks, are scenes that inspire the mind with 
gratitude and delight; but this the gloomy Calvinist of 
Connecticut, must not behold on a Sabbath-day. Entombed 
within the walls of his dwelling, he shuts from his view the 
temple of creation. The sun shines no joy to him. The 
gladdening voice of nature calls on him in vain. He is deaf, 
dumb, and blind to every thing around him that God has 
made. Such is the Sabbath-day of Connecticut. 

From whence could come this miserable notion of devo- 
tion ? It comes from the gloominess of the Calvinistic creed. 
If men love darkness rather than light, because their works 
are evil, the ulcerated mind of a Calvinist, who sees God 
only in terror, and sits brooding over the scenes of hell and 
damnation, can have no joy in beholding the glories of the 
creatiou. Nothing in that mighty and wonderous system 
accords with his principles or his devotion. He sees nothing 
there that tells him that God created millions on purpose 



* They were called Blue Laws because they were originally 
printed on blue paper. 



20 



OF THE SABBATH DAY OF CONNECTICUT. 



to be damned, and that children of a span long are born to 
burn for ever in hell. The creation preaches a different 
doctrine to this. We there see that the care and goodness 
of God is extended impartially over all the creatures he has 
made. The worm of the earth shares bis protection equally 
with the elephant of the desert. The grass that springs 
beneath our feet grows by his bounty as well as the cedars 
of Lebanon. Every thing in the creation reproaches the 
Calvinists with unjust ideas of God, and disowns the hard- 
ness and ingratitude of his principles. Therefore he shuns 
the sight of them on a Sabbath-day. 



AN ENEMY TO CANT AND IMPOSITION. 



THE WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THOMAS PAINE. 



The people of the State of New York, by the Grace of God, 
free and independent, to all to whom these presents shall 
come or may concern, send greeting : 



Know ye, that the annexed is a true copy of the Will of 
Thomas Paine, deceased, as recorded in the Office of our 
Surrogate, in and for the city and county of New York. 
In testimony whereof, we have caused the seal of said Office 
of our Surrogate to be hereunto affixed.— Witness, Silvanus 
Miller, Esq. Surrogate of said county, at the city of New 
York, the twelfth day of July, in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and nine, and of our independence, 
the thirty-fourth. 

Silvanus Miller. 



The last Will and Testament of me, the subscriber, Thomas 
Paine, reposing confidence in my Creator God, and in no other 
being, for I know of no other, nor believe in any other. I 
Thomas Paine, of the State of New York, author of the 
work entitled Common Sense, written in Philadelphia, in 

1775, and published in that city the beginning of January, 

1776, which awoke America to a Declaration of Indepen- 
dence on the fourth of July following, which was as fast as 
the work could spread through such an extensive country ; 
author also of the several numbers of the American Crisis, 
thirteen in all, published occasionally during the progress of 
the revolutionary war — the last is on the peace ; author also 
of Rights of Man, parts the first and second, written and 
published in London, in 1791 and 1792; author also of a 
work on religion, Age of Reason, part the first and second. 
N. B. I have a third part by me in manuscript, and an an- 



THE WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THOMAS PAINE. 



swer to the Bishop of Landaff ; author also of a work^ 
lately published, entitled Examination of the Passages in 
the New Testament, quoted from the Old, and called Pro- 
phecies concerning Jesus Christ, and shewing there are no 
Prophecies of any such Person; author also of several other 
works not here enumerated, Dissertation on the First Prin- 
ciples of Government, — Decline and Fall of the English 
System of Finance, — Agrarian Justice, &c. &c. make this 
my last Will and Testament, that is to say : I give and be- 
queath to my executors hereinafter appointed, Walter Mor- 
ton and Thomas Addis Emmet, thirty shares I hold in the 
New York Phoenix Insurance Company, which cost me 
fourteen hundred and seventy dollars, they are worth now 
upwards of fifteen hundred dollars, and all my move- 
able effects, and also the money that may be in my trunk or 
elsewhere at the time of my decease, paying thereout the 
expences of my funeral, in trust as to the said shares, 
moveables, atid money for Margaret Brazier Bonneville, of 
Paris, for her own sole and separate use, and at her own dis- 
posal, notwithstanding her coverture. As to my farm in 
New Rochelle, I give, devise, and bequeath the same to my 
said executors, Walter Morton and Thomas Addis Emmet, 
and to the survivor of them, his heirs and assigns for ever, 
in trust, nevertheless, to sell and dispose thereof, now in 
the occupation of Andrew A. Dean, beginning at the west 
end of the orchard, and running in a line with the land sold 

to Coles, to the end of the farm, and to apply the 

money arising from such sale as hereinafter directed. I give 
to my friends Walter Morton, of the New York Phoenix 
Insurance Company, and Thomas Addis Emmet, Counsel- 
lor at Law, late of Ireland, two hundred dollars each, and 
one hundred dollars to Mrs. Palmer, widow of Elibu Pal- 
mer, late of New York, to be paid out of the money arising 
from said sale; and I give the remainder of 'the money 
arising from that sale, one half thereof to Clio Rickman, of 
High or Upper Mary-le-Bone Street, London, and the other 
half to Nicholas Bonneville of Paris, husband of Margaret 
B. Bonneville aforesaid : and as to the south part of the said 
farm, containing upwards of one hundred acres, in trust to 
rent out the same or otherwise put it to profit, as shall be 
found most adviseable, and to pay the rents and profits 
thereof to the said Margaret B. Bonneville, in trust for her 
children, Benjamin Bonneville and Thomas Bonneville, their 
education and maintenance, until they come to the age of 



THE WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THOMAS PAINE, 23 

twenty-one years, in order that she may bring them well up, 
give them good and useful learning, and instruct them in 
their duty to God, and the practice of morality, the rent of 
the land or the interest of the money for which it may be 
sold, as hereinafter mentioned, to be employed in their edu- 
cation. And after the youngest of the said children shall 
have arrived at the age of twenty-one years, in further trust 
to convey the same to the said children, share and share 
alike, in fee simple. But if it shall be thought adviseable by 
my executors and executrix, or the survivor or survivors of 
them, at any time before the youngest of the said children 
shall come of age, to sell and dispose of the said south side 
of the said farm, in that case 1 hereby authorise and em- 
power my said executors to sell and dispose of the same, and 
I direct that the money arising from such sale be put into 
stock, either in the United States Bank stock, or New York 
Phoenix Insurance Company stock, the interest or dividends 
thereof to be applied as is already directed for the education 
and maintenance of the said children, and the principal to 
be transferred to the said children, or the survivor of them, 
on his or their coming of age. I know not if the society of 
people called Quakers admit a person to be buried in their 
burying ground, who does not belong to their society, but if 
they do, or will admit me, I would prefer being buried 
there; my father belonged to that profession, and I was 
partly brought up in it. But if it is not consistent with 
their rules to do this, I desire to be buried on my farm at 
New Rochelle. The place where I am to be buried, to be a 
square of twelve feet, to be enclosed with rows of trees, and 
a stone or post and rail fence, with a head stone with my 
name and age engraved upon it, author of Common Sense. 
I nominate, constitute, and appoint Walter Morton, of the 
New York Phoenix Insurance Company, and Thomas Ad- 
dis Emmet, counsellor at law r , late of Ireland, and Margaret 
B. Bonneville, executors and executrix to this my last Will 
aud Testament, requesting them the said Walter Morton and 
Thomas Addis Emmet, that they will give what assistance 
they conveniently can to Mrs. Bonneville, and see that the 
children be well brought up. Thus placing confidence in 
their friendship, I herewith take my final leave of them and 
of the world. I have lived an honest and useful life to 
mankind ; my time has been spent in doing good, and I die 
in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Cre- 
ator God. Dated this eighteenth day of January, in the 



2i THE WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THOMAS PAINE, 

year one thousand eight hundred and nine; and I have also 
signed my name to the other sheet of this Will in testimony 
of its beiDg a part thereof. 

THOMAS PAINE. [L S.] 

Signed, sealed, published and declared by the Testator, 
in our presence, who at his request, and in the presence of 
each other, have set our names as witnesses thereto, the 
words " published and declared" first interlined. 

Wm. Keese. 
James Angevine. 
Cornelius Ryder. 



Printed by M. A. CAROLE, 55. Fleet Street. 



OF THE WORD RELIGION. 



25 



BIBLE ANACHRONISM. 



The 7th chapter of Genesis 2d verse makes God to say to 
Noah, " Of every clean beast thou shalt take unto thee by 
sevens, the male and his female, and of every beast that are 
not clean, by two, the male and his female." 

Now, there was no such thing as beasts clean and un- 
clean in the time of Noah. Neither were there any such 
people as Jews or Israelites at that time, to whom that dis- 
tinction was a law. The law, called the law of Moses, by 
which a distinction is made, beasts clean and unclean, was 
not until several hundred years after the time that Noah is 
said to have lived,. The story therefore detects itself, be- 
cause the inventor of it forgot himself, by making God 
make use of an expression that could not be used at the 
time. The blunder is of the same kind, as if a man in tell- 
ing a story about America a hundred years ago, should 
quote an expression from Mr. Jefferson's inaugural speech 
as if spoken by him at that time, 

My opinion of this story is the same as what a man once 
said to another, who asked him in a drawling tone of voice, 
" Do you believe the account about No-ah?" The other 
replied in the same tone of voice, ah-no. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



OF THE WORD RELIGION, AND OTHER WORDS OF UN- 
CERTAIN SIGNIFICATION. 



The word religion is a word of forced application when 
used with respect to the worship of God. The root of the 
word is the Latin verb Ugo, to tie or bind. From ligo, comes 
religo, to tie or bind over again, or make more fast — from 
religo, comes the substantive religio, which with the addi- 
tion of n makes the English substantive religion. The 
French use the word properly — when a woman enters a 
convent she is called a noviciate, that is, she is upon trial 
or probation. When she takes the oath, she is called a 
• 4 



OF THE WORD RELIGION. 



religieuse, that is, she is tied or bound by that oath to 
the performance of it. We use the word in the same 
kind of sense when we say we will religiously perform the 
promise that we make. 

But the word, without referring to its etymology has, in 
the manner it is used, no definitive meaning, because it does 
not designate what religion a man is of, there is the religion 
of the Chinese, of the Tatars, of the Bramins, of the Per- 
sians, of the Jews, of the Turks, &c. 

The word Christianity is equally as vague as the word 
religion. No two sectaries can agree what it is. It is a lo 
here and lo there. The two principal sectaries, Papists and 
Protestants, have often cut each other's throats about it: — 
The Papists call the Protestants heretics, and the Protestants 
call the Papists idolators. The minor sectaries have shewn 
the same spirit of rancour, but as the civil law restrains 
them from blood, they content themselves with preach- 
ing damnation against each other. 

The word Protestant has a positive signification in the 
sense it is used. It means protesting against the authority 
of the Pope, and this is the only article in which the Pro- 
testants agree. In every other sense, with respect to religion, 
the word Protestant, is as vague as the word Christian. When 
we say an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Quaker, 
we know what those persons are, and what tenets they hold — 
but when we say a Christian we know he is not a Jew nor 
a Mahometan, but we know not if he be a Trinitarian or an 
Anti-Triuitariau, a. believer in what is called the immaculate 
conception, or a disbeliever, a man of seven sacraments, or 
of two sacraments, or of none. The word Christian des- 
cribes what a man is not, but not what he is. 

The word Theology, from Theos, the Greek word for 
God, and meaning the study and knowledge of God, is 
a word, that strictly speaking, belongs to Theists or Deists, 
and not to the Christians. The head of the Christian 
church is the person called Christ — but the head of the 
church of the Theists, or Deists, as they are more commonly 
called, from Deus, the Latin word for God, is God himself, 
and therefore the word Theology belongs to that church 
which has Theos or God for its head, and not to the Chris- 
tian church which has the person called Christ for its head. 
Their technical word is Christianity and they cannot agree 
what Christianity is. 

The words revealed religion, and natural religion, re- 
quire also explanation. They are both invented terms, con- 



OF THE WORD RELIGION 



27 



Irived by the church for the support of priestcraft. With 
respect to the first, there is no evidence of any such thing, 
except in the universal revelation, that God has made of his 
power, his wisdom, his goodness, in the structure of the uni- 
verse, and in all the works of creation. We have no cause 
or ground from any thing we behold in those works, to 
suppose God would deal partially by mankind, and reveal 
.knowledge to one nation and withhold it from another, and 
then damn them for not knowing it. The sun shines an 
equal quantity of light all over the world — and mankind in 
all ages and countries are endued with reason, and blessed 
with sight, to read the visible works of God in the creation, 
and so intelligent is this book that he that runs may read. 
We admire the wisdom of the ancients, yet they had no 
bibles, nor books, called revelation. They cultivated the 
reason that God gave them, studied him in his works, and 
arose to eminence. 

As to the Bible, whether true or fabulous, it is a history, 
and history is not revelation. If Solomon had seven hun- 
dred wives, and three hundred concubines ; and if Samson 
slept in Delila's lap, and she cut his hair off ; the relation of 
those things is mere history, that needed no revelation from 
heaven to tell it; neither does it need any revelation to tell 
us that Samson was a fool for his pains and Solomon too. 

As to the expression so often used in the Bible, that the 
word of the Lord, came to such an one, or such an one, it 
was the fashion of speaking in those times, like the expres- 
sion used by a Quaker, that the spirit moveth him, or that 
used by priests, that they have a call. We ought not to be 
deceived by phrases because they are ancient. But if we 
admit the supposition that God would condescend to reveal 
himself in words, we ought not to believe it would be in 
such idle and profligate stories as are in the Bible, and it is 
for this reason, among others, which our reverence to God 
inspires, that the Deists deny that the book called the Bible 
is the word of God or that it is revealed religion. 

With respect to the term, natural religio?i, it is upon the 
face of it, the opposite of artificial religion, and it is impos- 
sible for any man to be certain that what is called revealed 
religion, is not artificial. Man has the power of making 
books inventing stories of God, and calling them revelation 
or the word of God. The Koran exists as an instance that 
this can be done, and we must be credulous indeed to sup- 
pose that this is the only instance, and Mahomet the only 
impostor. The Jews could match him, and the church of 



28 



ON INFIDELITY. 



Rome could overmatch the Jews. The Mahometans be- 
lieve the Koran, the Christians believe the Bible, and it is 
education makes all the difference. 

Books, whether Bibles or Korans, carry no evidence of 
being the work of any other power than man. It is only that 
which man cannot do that carries the evidence of being the 
work of a superior power. Man could not invent and 
make a universe — he could not invent nature, for nature is 
of divine origin. It is the laws by which the universe is 
governed. When, therefore, we look through nature up to 
nature's God, we are in the right road to happiness, but 
when we trust to books as the word of God, and confide in 
them as revealed religion, we are afloat on an ocean of un- 
certainty, and shatter into contending factions. The term, 
therefore natural religion, explains itself to be divine reli- 
gion, and the term revealed religion involves in it the sus- 
picion of being artificial. 

To shew the necessity of understanding the meaning of 
words, I will mention an instance of a minister, I believe of 
the Episcopalian church, of Newark, in Jersey. He wrote 
and published a book, and entitled it, " An Antidote to 
Deism." An antidote to Deism, must be Atheism. It has 
no other antidote — for what can be an antidote to the belief 
of a God, but the disbelief of a God. Under the tuition of 
such pastors, what but ignorance and false information can 
be expected. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



-ON INFIDELITY. 



Robert Hall,: a protestant minister in England, preached 
and published a sermon against what he calls " Modern In- 
fidelity." A copy of it was sent to a gentleman in America, 
with a request for his opinion thereon. That gentleman sent 
it to a friend of his in New- York with the request written on 
the cover — and this last sent it to Thomas Paine, who wrote 
the following observations on the blank leaf at the end of 
the Sermon, 

REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING SERMON. 

The preacher of the foregoing sermon speaks a great deal 
about infidelity, but does not define what he means by it. 



ON INFIDELITY. 



29 



His harangue is a general exclamation. Every thing, I sup- 
pose, that is not in his creed is infidelity with him, and his 
creed is infidelity with me. Infidelity is believing falsely. 
If what Christians believe is not true, it is the Christians that 
are the infidels. 

The point between Deists and Christians is not about doc- 
trine, but about fact — for if the things believed by the Chris- 
tians to be facts, are not facts, the doctrine founded thereon falls 
of itself. There is such a book as the Bible, but is it a fact 
that the Bible is revealed ' religion? The Christians cannot 
prove it is. They put tradition in place of evidence, and 
tradition is not proof. If it were, the reality of witches 
could be proved by the same kind of evidence. 

The Bible is a history of the times of which it speaks, and 
history is not revelation. The obscene and vulgar stories 
in the Bible are as repugnant to our ideas of the purity of a 
divine Being, as the horrid cruelties and murders it ascribes 
to him, are repugnant to our ideas of his justice. It is the 
reverence of the Deists for the attributes of the Deity, that 
causes them to reject the Bible-. 

Is the account which the Christian church gives of the 
person called Jesus Christ, a fact or a fable? Is it a fact 
that he was begotten by the Holy Ghost? The Chris- 
tians cannot prove it, for the case does not admit of 
proof. The things called miracles in the Bible, such for 
instance as raising the dead, admitted, if true, of ocular de- 
monstration, but the story of the conception of Jesus Christ 
in the womb is a cause beyond miracle, for it did not admit 
of demonstration. Mary, the reputed mother of Jesus, 
who must be supposed to know best, never said so herself, 
and all the evidence of it is, that the book of Matthew says, 
that Joseph dreamed an angel told him so. Had an old 
maid of two or three hundred years of age, brought forth 
a child, it would have been much better presumptive evi- 
dence of a supernatural conception, than Matthew's story 
of Joseph's dream about his young wife. 

Is it a fact that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the 
world, and how is it proved? If a God, he could not die, 
and as a man he could not redeem, how then is this redemp- 
tion proved to be fact? It is said that Adam ate of the for- 
bidden fruit, commonly called an apple, and thereby sub- 
jected himself and all his posterity for ever to eternal dam- 
nation. — This is worse than visiting the sins of the fathers 
upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. 
But how was the death of Jesus Christ to. affect or alter the 



30 



OF THE TOWER OF BABEL. 



case?— Did God thirst for blood? If so, would it not have 
been better to have crucified Adam at once upon the for- 
bidden tree, and made a new man? Would not this have 
been more Creator-like than repairing the old one? Or, did 
God, when he made Adam, supposing the story to be true, 
exclude himself from the right of making another? Or im- 
pose on himself the necessity of breeding from the old stock? 
Priests should first prove facts and deduce doctrines from 
them afterwards. But instead of this, they assume every 
thing and prove nothing. Authorities drawn from the 
Bible are no more than authorities drawn from other books, 
unless it can be proved that the Bible is revelation. 

This story of the redemption will not stand examination. 
That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an 
apple, by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the 
strangest system of religion ever set up. Deism is perfect 
purity compared with this. It is an established principle 
with the Quakers not to shed blood — suppose then all Jeru- 
salem had been Quakers when Christ lived, there would 
have been nobody to crucify him, and in that case, if man 
is redeemed by his blood, which is the belief of the church, 
there could have been no redemption — and the people of 
Jerusalem must all have been damned, because they were 
too good to commit murder. The Christian system of reli- 
gion is an outrage on common sense. Why is man afraid 
to think? 

Why do not the Christians, to be consistent, make saints 
of Judas and Pontius Pilate, for they were the persons who 
accomplished the act of salvation. The merit of a sacrifice, 
if there can be any merit in it, was never in the thing sacri- 
ficed, but in the persons offering up the sacrifice — and 
therefore Judas and Pontius Pilate ought to stand first on 
the calendar of saints. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



OF THE TOWER OF BABEL. 



The story of the tower of Babel is told in the eleventh 
chapter of Genesis. It begins thus. — " And the whole 
earth (it was but a very little part of it they knew) was of 
one language and of one speech. And it came to pass as 
they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the 



OF THE TOWER OF BABEL. 



31 



laud of Shinar and they dwelt there. — And they said one to 
another, Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly, 
and they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mor- 
tar. — And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower 
whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a 
name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the 
whole earth. — And the Lord came down to see the city and 
the tower which the children of men builded. — And the 
Lord said, behold the people is one, and they have all one 
language, and this they begin to do, and now nothing will 
be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. — 
Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, 
that they may not understand one another's speech. — So, 
(that is, by that means) the Lord scattered them abroad 
from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off 
building the city." 

This is the story, and a very foolish inconsistent story it 
is. In the first place, the familiar and irreverend manner 
in which the almighty is spoken of in this chapter, is offen- 
sive to a serious mind. As to the project of building a 
tower whose top should reach to heaven, there never could 
be a people so foolish as to have such a notion; but to re- 
present the almighty as jealous of the attempt, as the writer 
of the story has done, is adding profanation to Tolly. — 
" Go to," say the builders, " let us build us a tower whose 
top shall reach to heaven. Go to, says God, let us go down 
and confound their language." This quaintness is indecent, 
and the reason given for it is worse, for, " now nothing will 
be restrained from them which they have' imagined to do." 
This is representing the Almighty as jealous of their getting 
into heaven. The story is too ridiculous, even as a fable, to 
account for the diversity of languages in the world, for 
which it seems to have been intended. 

As to the project of confounding their language for the 
purpose of making them separate, it is altogether inconsist- 
ent; because instead of producing this effect, it would, by 
increasing their difficulties, render them more necessary to 
each other, and cause them to keep together. Where could 
they go to better themselves? 

Another observation upon this story is, the inconsistency 
of it with respect to the opinion that the Bible is the word 
of God given for the information of mankind; for nothing 
could so effectually prevent such a word being known by 
mankind as confounding their language. The people who 
after this spoke different languages, could no more under- 



32 ON THE BIBLE AS A BOOK OF DIVINE REVELATION. 



stand such a word generally, than the builders of Babel 
could understand one another. It would have been neces- 
sary, therefore, had such word ever been given or intended 
to be given, that the whole earth should be, as they say it 
was at first, of one language, and of one speech, and that it 
should never have been confounded. 

The case however is, that the Bible will not bear exami- 
nation in any part of it, which it would do if it was the word 
of God. Those who most believe it are those who know 
least about it, and the priests always take care to keep the 
inconsistent and contradictory parts out of sight. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



ON THE BIBLE AS A BOOK OF DIVINE REVELATION. 



The church tells us that the books of the Old and New Tes 
lament are divine revelation, and without this revelation we 
could not have true ideas of God. 

The Deists, on the contrary, say that those books are not 
divine revelation, and that were it not for the light of reason, 
and the religion of Deism, those books, instead of teaching 
us trueideasof God, would teach us not only false but blas- 
phemous ideas of him. 

Deism teaches us that God is a God of truth and justice. 
Does the Bible teach the same doctrine? It does not. 

The Bible says (Jeremiah, chap. 20, ver. 7) that God is a 
deceiver. " O Lord (says Jeremiah) .thou hast deceived 
me, and I was deceived. Thou art stronger than I, and 
hast prevailed." 

Jeremiah not only upbraids God with deceiving him but, 
in chap. 4, ver. 9, he upbraids God with deceiving the peo- 
ple of Jerusalem. "Ah! Lord God! (says he) surely thou 
hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying ye 
shall have peace whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul." 

In chap. 15, ver. 8, the Bible becomes more impudent, and 
calls God, in plain language, a liar. " Wilt thou, (says Je- 
remiah to God) be altogether unto me as a liar and as waters 
that fail." 

Ezekier, chap. 14, ver. 9, makes God to say — " If the pro- 
phet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, / the Lord 
have deceived that prophet." All this is downright blas- 
phemy. 



RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. 33 

The prophet Micaiah, as he is called, 2 Chron. chap. 18, ver. 
18, tells another blasphemous story of God. — "I saw, (says 
he,) the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven 
standing on his right hand and on his left. And the Lord 
said, who shall entice Ahab king of Israel to go up and fall 
at Ramoth Gilead? And one spoke after this manner and 
another after that manner. Then there came out a spirit 
(Micaiah does not tell us where he came from) and stood 
before the Lord, (what an impudent fellow this spirit was) 
and said, 1 will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, 
wherewith? and he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit 
in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said thou 
shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail ; go out and do 
even so. 

We often hear of a gang of thieves plotting to rob and 
murder a man and laying a plan to entice him out that they 
may execute their design, and we always feel shocked at 
the wickedness of such wretches ; but what must we think 
of a book that describes the Almighty acting in the same 
manner, and laying plans in heaven to entrap and ruin 
mankind. Our ideas of his justice and goodness forbid 
us to believe such stories, and therefore we say that a lying 
spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of 
the Bible. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



The following publication, which lias appeared in several newspapers in 
different parts of the United States, shews in the most striking manner 
the character and effects of religious fanaticism," and to what extravagant 
lengths it will carry jts unruly and destructive operations. We give it a 
place in the Prospect, because -we think the perusal of it will be gratifying 
to our subscribers; and because, by exposing the true character of such fran- 
tic zeal, we hope to produce some influence upon the reason of man and 
induce him to rise superior to such dreadful illusions. The judicious re- 
marks at the end of this account were communicated to us by a very in- 
telligent and faithful friend to the cause of Deism. 

Extract from a letter of the Rev. George Scott, of Mill Creek, Washington 
Count tj, Pennsylvania to Col. William M' Farran, of Mount Bethel North- 
ampton County, P. dated Nov. 3, 1802. 

My dear Friend, 
We have wonderful times here. God has been pleased to visit this barren 
corner with abundance of his grace. The work began in a neighbouring con- 
5 



34 



RELIGIOUS INTEIjLIGE S C E . 



gregation, at a sacramental occasion, about the last of Septembe r. It did 
not make its appearance in my congregation till the first Tuesday of Octo- 
ber. After society, in the night, there appeared an evident stir among the 
young people", but nothing of the appearance of what appeared afterwards. 
On Saturday evening following we had society, but it was dull throughout. 
On Sabbath-day one cried out, but nothing else extraordinary appeared. — • 
That evening I went part ol'tlie. way to Raccoon congregation, where the 
_sacrainent ofthe supper was administered; but on Monday morning a very 
strong impression of duty constrained me to return to my congregation 
in the Flats, where the work was begun. We met in the afternoon at the 
meeting-house where we had a warm society. In the evening we removed 
to a neighbouring house, where we continued in society till midnight ; num- 
bers were falling all the time of society. After the people were dismissed, a 
considerable number staid and sung hymns, till perhaps two o'clock in the 
morning when the work began to the astonishment of all. Only five or six 
were left able to take care ofthe rest ofthe number perhaps of near forty. — 
They fell in all directions on benches, on beds, and on the floor. Next 
morning the people began to flock in from all quarters. One girl came early 
in the morning, but did not get within one hundred yards of the house before 
she fell powerless, and was carried in. We could not leave the house, and 
therefore continued society all that day and all that night, and on Wednesday 
morning I was obliged to leave a number of them on the spot. On Thursday 
evening we met again, when the work was amazing; about twenty persons 
lay to all appearance dead for near two and a half hours, and a great number 
cried out with sore distress. — Friday I preached at Mill Creek. Here nothing 
appeared more than an unusual solemnity. That evening we had society, 
where great numbers were brought under conviction, but none fell. On Sab- 
bath-day I preached at Mill Creek. This day and evening was a very solemn 
time but none fell. On Monday I went to attend presbytery, but returned 
on Thursday evening to the Hats, where society was appointed, when num- 
bers were struck down. On Saturday evening we had society, and a very so- 
lemn time — about a dozen persons lay dead three and a half hours by the 
watch. On Sabbath a number fell, and we were obliged to continue all night 
in society, as we had done every evening we had met before. On Monday 
a Mr. Hughes preached at Mill Creek, but nothing extraordinary ap- 
peared, only a great deal of falling. We concluded to divide that even- 
ing into two societies, in order to accommodate the people. Mr. 11. attended 
the one and I the other. Nothing strange appeared where Mr. H. at- 
tended ; but where I attended God was present in the most wonderful man- 
ner. I believe there was not one present but was more or less affected. 
A considerable number fell powerless, and two or three after lying some 
time, recovered with joy, and spoke near half an hour. One, especially, 
declared in a surprising manner the wonderful view she had of the person, 
character, and offices of Christ, with such accuracy of language that I was as- 
tonished to hear it. Surely this must be the work of God! On Thursday 
evening we had a lively society, but not much falling down. On Satur- 
day we all went to the Cross lloads, and attended a sacrament. Here 
were, perhaps, about iOGO pei_ple collected. The weather was uncomforta- 
ble ; on the Sabbath-day it rained, and on Monday it snowed. We had thir- 
teen ministers present. '1 he exercises began on Saturday, and continued 
on night and day with little or no intermission. Great numbers 
fell ; to speak within bounds, there were upwards of 150 down at one time 
and some of them continued three or four hours with but little appearance 
of life. Numbers came to, rejoicing, while others were deeply distressed. 
The scene was wonderful: the cries of the distressed, and the agonizing 



RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



35 



groans, gave some faint representation of the awful cries and bitter screams 
which will no doubt be extorted from the damned in hell. But what is 
to me the most surprising, of those, who have been subjects among my peo- 
ple, with whom I have conversed, but three had any terrors of hell during 
their exercise. The principal cry is, O how long have I rejected Christ ! O 
how often have I embrued my hands in his precious blood! O how otterr 
have I waded through his precious blood by stifling conviction! O this 
dreadful hard heart! O what a dreadful monster sin is ! It was my sin that 
nailed Jesus to the cross, &c. 

The preaching is various ; some thunder the terrors of the law — others 
preach the mild invitation- of the gospel. For my part, since the work be- 
gan, I have confined myself chiefly to the doctrines of our fallen state by 
nature and the way of recovery through Christ; opening the way of salva- 
tion ; shewing how God can be just and yet be the justifier of them that 
believe, and also the nature of true faith and repentance; pointing out the 
difference between true and false religion, and urging the invitations of the 
gospel in the most engaging- manner that I am master of, without any 
strokes of terror. The convictions and cries appear to be, perhaps, neariy 
equal under all these different modes of preaching, but it appears rather 
most when we preach on the fulness and freeness of salvation. 

OBSERVATIONS ON THE FOREGOING LETTER. 

In the filth chapter of Mark we read a strange story of 
the devil getting into the swine after he had been turned out 
of a man, and as the freaks of the devil in that story and the 
tumble-down descriptions in this are very much alike; the 
two stories ought to go together. 

" And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into 
the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come 
out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs 
a man with an unclean spirit. Who had his dwelling 
among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no not 
with chains: Because that he had been often bound with 
fetters and chains, and chains had been plucked asunder by 
him, and the fetters broken in pieces; neither could any man 
tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the moun- 
tains and in the tombs, crying and cutting himself with stones. 
But whenhe saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and 
cried with a loud voice, and said, what have I to do with 
thee, Jesus, thou son of the most high God ? I adjure thee 
by God, that thou torment me not. (For he said unto him, 
come out of the man, thou unclean spirit,) And he asked 
him, what is thy name? and he answered, saying, ray name 
is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much 
that he would not send them away out of the country. 
Now there was there, nigh unto the mountains, a great herd 
of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying 
send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And 



36 



RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits 
went out, and entered into the swine; and the herd ran 
violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about 
two thousand,) and were choaked in the sea." 

The force of imagination is capable of producing strange 
effects. — When animal magnetism began in France, which 
was while Doctor Franklin was minister to that country, 
the wonderful accounts given of the wonderful effects it 
produced on the persons who were under the operation ex- 
ceeded any thing related in the foregoing letter from Wash- 
ington county. They tumbled down fell into trances, 
roared and rolled about like persons supposed to be be- 
witched. The Government, in order to ascertatin the fact 
or detect the imposition, appointed a committee of physicians 
to inquire into the case, and Doctor Franklin was requested 
to accompany them which he did. 

The committee went to the Operator's house, and the per- 
sons on whom an operation was to be performed were 
assembled. The were placed in the position in which they 
had been when under former operatians, and blind-folded. 
In a little time they began to shew signs of agitation, and in 
the space of about two hours they went through all the 
frantic airs they had shewn before; but the case was, that 
no operation was performing upon them, neither was the 
Operator in the room, for he had been ordered out of it by the 
physicians ; but as the persons did not know this, they 
supposed him present and operating upon them. It was the 
effect of imagination only. Doctor Franklin in relating this 
account to the writer of this article, said that he thought the 
Government might as well have let it gone on, for that as 
imagination sometimes produced disorders it might also 
cure some; and a similar remark may be made on this ac- 
count from Washington county, for it makes the people 
better livers than before, let it go on. It is fortunate however, 
that this falling-down and crying-out scene did not happen 
in New England a century ago, for if it had the preachers 
would have been hung for withcraft, and in more ancient 
times the poor falling-down folks would have been supposed 
to be possessed of a devil, like the man in Mark, among the 
tombs. The progress that reason and Deism make in the 
world, lessen the force of superstition, and abate the spirit 
of persecution. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



A LETTER; BEING AN ANSWER TO A FRIEND, ON' THE 
PUBLICATION OF THE " AGE OF REASON." 



Paris, May 12, 1797. 
In your letter of the 20th of March you give me several 
quotations from the Bible, which you call the word of God, 
to shew me that my opinions on religion are wroDg, and I 
could give you as many from the same book to shew that 
yours are not right; consequently then the Bible decides 
nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one 
choose to make it. 

But by what authority do you call the Bible the word of 
God? for this is the first point to be settled. It is not your 
calling it so that makes it so, any more than the Mahometans 
calling the Koran the word of God that makes the Koran to 
be so. The Popish Councils of Nice and Laodocea about 
350 years after the time that the person called Jesus Christ 
is said to have lived, voted the books that now compose 
what is called the New Testament to be the word of God. 
This was done by yeas and ?iays as we now vote a law. 
The Pharisees of the second Temple, after the Jews returned 
from captivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that 
now compose the Old Testament, and this is all the au- 
thority there is, which to me is no authority at all. I 
am as capable of judging for myself as they were, and I 
think more so, because as they made a living by their reli- 
gion, they had a self-interest in the vote they gave. 

You may have an opinion that a man is inspired, but you 
cannot prove it, nor can you have any proof of it yourself, 
because you cannot see into his mind in order to know how 
he comes by his thoughts, and the same is the case with the 
word revelation. There can be no evidence of such a thing, 
for you can no more prove revelation than you can prove 
what another man dreams of, neither can he prove it himself. 

It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses; 
but how do you know that God spake unto Moses? Be- 
cause, you will say, the Bible says so\ The Koran says that 
God spake unto Mahomet, do you believe that too? No. 
Why not? Because, you will say, you do not believe it; 
and so, because you do, and because you don't, is all the 
reason you can give for believing or disbelieving, except 



38 



A LETTER TO A IKIEND. 



that you vvill say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how 
do you know that Moses was not an impostor? For my 
own part I believe that all are impostors that pretend to hold 
verbal communication with the Deity. It is the way by 
which the world has been imposed upon; but if you think 
otherwise you have the same right to your opiuion that I 
have to mine, and must answer for it in the same manner. 
But all this does not settle the point, whether the Bible be 
the word of God, or not. It is therefore necessary to go a 
step farther. The case then is : — 

You form your opinion of God from the account given 
of him in the Bible; and 1 form my opinion of the Bible 
from the wisdom and goodness of God, manifested in the 
structure of the universe, and in all the works of creation. 
The result in these two cases will be, that you, by taking 
the Bible for -your standard, will have a bad opinion of 
God; and 1 by taking God for my standard, shall have a 
bad opinion of the Bible. 

The Bible represents God to be a changeable, passionate, 
vindictive Being; making a world and then drowning it, 
and afterwards repenting of what he had done and promis- 
ing not to do so again, Setting one nation to cut the 
throats of another, and stopping the course of the sun till 
the butchery should be done. But the works of God in the 
creation preaches to us another doctrine. -In that vast 
volume we see nothing to give us the idea of a changeable, 
passionate, vindictive God, every thing we there behold 
impresses us with a contrary idea; that of unchangeableness, 
and of eternal order, harmony, and goodness. The sun and 
the seasons return at their appointed time, and every thing 
in the creation proclaims that God is unchangeable. Now, 
which am I to believe, a book that any imposter might 
make and cail the word of God, or the creation itself which 
none but an almighty power could make, for the Bible says 
one thing, and the creation says the contrary. The Bible 
represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the 
creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God. 

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, 
and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel 
man. That blood-thirsty man, called the prophet Samuel, 
makes God to say, (1 Sam. chap. xv. ver. 3,) " now go and 
smite Amalek, and utterly destroy ali that they have, and 
spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and 
suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." 

That Samuel, or some impostor, might say, this is what, 



A LETTER TO A FRIEND. 



39 



at this distance of time, can neither be proved nor disproved, 
but in my opinion it is blasphemy to say, or to believe, that 
■God said it. All our ideas of the justice and goodness of 
God revolt at the impious cruelty of the Bible. It is not a 
Gotl, just and good, but a devil, uuder the name of God, 
that the Bible describes. 

What makes this pretended order to destroy the Amale- 
kites appear the worse, is the reason given for it. The 
Amalekites four hundred years before, according to the ac- 
count in Exodus, chap. 17, (but which has the appearance 
of fable from the magical account it gives of Moses holding 
up his hands) had opposed the Israelites coming into their 
country, and this the Amalekites had a right to do, because the 
Israelites were theinvaders, as the Spaniards were the invaders 
of Mexico ; and this opposition by the Amalekites at that time 
is given as a reason that the men, women, infants, and suck- 
lings, sheep and oxen, camels and asses that were born four 
hundred years afterwards should be put to death ; and to com- 
plete the horror Samuel hewed Agag, the chief of the Amale- 
kites, in pieces as you would hew a stick of wood. I will be- 
stow a few observations on this, case. 

In the the first place, nobody knows who the author, or 
writer, of the book of Samuel was, and therefore the fact 
itself has no other proof than anonymous or hear-say evi- 
dence, which is no evidence at all. Irt the second place, 
this anonymous book says that this slaughter was done by 
the express command of God ; but all our ideas of the jus- 
tice and goodness of God give the lie to the book, and as I 
never will believe any book that ascribes cruelty and injus- 
tice to God, 1 therefore reject the Bible as unworthy of credit. 

As I have now given you my reasons for believing that 
the Bible is not the word of God, that it is a falshood, I 
have a right to ask you your reasons for believing the 
contrary ; but I know you can give me none, except that 
you were educated to believe the Bible, and as the Turks 
give the same reason for believing the Koran it is evident 
that education makes all the difference, and that reason and 
truth have nothing to do in the case. You believe in the 
Bible from the accident of birth, and the Turks believe in the 
Koran from the same accident, and each call the other In- 
fidel. But leaving the prejudice of education out of the 
case, the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who be- 
lieve falsely of God, whether they draw their creed from 
the" Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old Testament, or 
from the New. 



40 



DEISM COMPARED WITH CHRISTIANITY. 



When you have examined the Bible with the attention 
that I have clone, (for I do not think you know much about 
it,) and permit yourself to have just ideas of God, you will 
most probably believe as [ do. But I wish you to know 
that this answer to your letter is not written for the purpose 
of changing your opinion. It is written to satisfy you, and 
some other friends whom I esteem, that my disbelief of the 
Bible is founded on a pure and religious belief in God ; for 
in my opinion the Bible is a gross libel against the justice 
and goodness of God in almost every part of it. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



OF THE RELIGION OF DEISM COMPARED WITH THE 
CHRISTIAN RELIGION, AND THE SUPERIORITY OF THE 
FORMER OVER THE LATTER. 



Every person of whatever religious denomination he may 
be is a Deist in the first article of his creed. Deism from 
the Latin word Deus, God, is the belief of a God, and this 
belief is the first article of every man's creed. 

It is on this article, universally consented to by all man- 
kind, that the Deist builds his church and here 'he rests. 
Whenever we step aside from this article, by mixing it with 
articles of human invention, we wander into a labyrinth of un- 
certainty and fa.ble, and become exposed to every kind of 
imposition by pretenders to revelation. The Persian shews 
the Zendavesta of Zoroaster the law-giver of Persia, and 
calls it the divine law; the Brahmin shews the Shasler, re- 
vealed, he says, by God to Brama, and given to him out of 
a cloud ; the Jew shews what he calls the law of Moses, 
given, he says, by God on the Mount Sinai; the Christian 
shews a collection of books and epistles written by nobody 
knows who, and called the New Testament, and the Ma- 
hometan shews the Koran, given, he says, by God to Ma- 
homet; each of these calls itself revealed religion, and the 
only true word of God, and this the followers of each profess 
to believe from the habit of education, and each believes the 
others are imposed upon. 

But when" the divine gift of reason begins to expand 
itself in the mind and calls man to reflection, he then reads 
and contemplates God in his works, and not in books pre- 
tending to revelation. The creation is the Bible of a true 



DEISM COMPARED WITH CHRISTIANITY. 



41 



believer in God. Every thing in this vast volume inspires 
him with sublime ideas of the Creator. The little and pal- 
try, and often obscene tales of the Bible sink into wretched- 
ness when put in comparison with this mighty work. The 
Deist needs node of those tricks and shows called miracles 
to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than 
the creation itself and his own existence. 

There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, 
that is not to be found in any other system of religion All 
other systems have something in them that either shock our 
reason or are repugnant to it, and mau, if he thinks at all, 
muststifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them. 
But in Deism our reason and our belief become happily 
united. The wonderful structure of the urjiverse and every 
thing we behold in the system of creation prove to us, far 
better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the 
same time proclaim his attributes. It is by the exercise of 
our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in his 
works and imitate him in his ways. When we see his care 
and gooduess extended over all his creatures, it teaches us 
our duty towards each other, while it calls forth our grati- 
tude to him. It is by forgetting God in his works, and run- 
ning after books of pretended revelation that man has wan- 
dered from the straight path of duty and happiness, and 
become by turns the victim of doubt and the dupe of delu- 
sion. 

Except in the first article in the Christian creed, that of 
believing in God, there is not an article in it but fills the 
mind with doubt as to the truth of it the instant man begins 
to think. Now every article in a creed that is necessary to 
the happiness and salvation of man ought to be as evident 
to the reason and comprehension of man as the first article 
is, for God has not given us reason for the purpose of con- 
founding us, but that we should use it for our own happiness 
and his glory. - v 

The truth of the first article is proved by God himself and 
is universal, for the creation is of itself demonstration of the 
existence of a Creator. But the second article, that of God's 
begetting a son, is not proved in like manner, and stands on 
no other authority than that of tale. Certain books in what 
is called the New Testament tell us that Joseph dreamed 
an angel told him so. (Matthew chap, i, ver. 20) " And be- 
hold the angel of the Lord appeared unto Joseph in a dream, 
saying, Joseph thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee 
Marv thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the 



42 



DEISM COMPARED WITH CHRISTIANITY. 



Holy Ghost." The evidence upon this article bears no 
comparison with the evidence upon the first article, and 
therefore is not entitled to the same credit, and ought not to 
be made an article in a creed, because the evidence of it is 
defective, and what evidence there is, is doubtful and suspi- 
cious. We do not believe the first article on the authority 
of books, whether called Bibles or Korans, nor yet on the 
visionary authority of dreams, but on the authority of God's 
own visible works in the creation. The nations who never 
heard of such books, nor of such people as Jews, Christians, 
or Mahometans, believe the existence of a God as fully as 
we do, because it is self evident. The work of man's hands 
is a proof of the existence of mau as fully as his personal 
appearance would be. When we see a watch we have as 
positive evidence of the existence of a watchmaker as if we 
saw him ; and in like manner the creation is evidence to our 
reason and our senses of the existence of a Creator. But 
there is nothing in the works of God that is evidence that 
he begat a son, nor any thing in the system of creation that 
corroborates such an idea, and therefore we are not autho- 
rised in believing it. What truth there may be in the story 
that Mary, before she was married to Joseph, was kept by 
one of the Roman soldiers, and was with child by him, I 
leave to be settled between the Jews and the Christians. 
The story however has probability on its side, for her hus- 
band Joseph suspected and was jealous of her, and was go- 
ing to put her away. "Joseph her husband being a just 
man, and not willing to make her a public example, was going 
to put her away privately." (Matthew chap, i, ver. 19). 

I have already said, that " whenever we step aside from 
the first article (that of believing in God) we wander into a 
labyrinth of uncertainty," and here is evidence of the justness 
of the remark, for it is impossible for us to decide who was 
Jesus Christ's father. But presumption can assume any 
thing, and therefore it makes Joseph's dream to be of equal 
authority with the existence of God, and to help it on it calls 
it revelation. It is impossible for the mind of man in its 
serious moments, however it may have been entangled by 
education, or beset by priestcraft, not to stand still and 
doubt upon the truth of this article and of its creed. But 
this is not all. 

The second article of the Christian creed having brought 
the son of Mary into the world (and this Mary according 
to the chronological tables was a girl of only fifteen years 
of age when this son wa^ bom) the next article goes on to 



DEISM COMPARED WITH CHRISTIANITY. 



43 



account for his being begotten, which was, that when he 
grew a man he should be put to death to expiate, they 
say, the sin that Adam brought into the world by eating au 
apple, or some kind of forbidden fruit. 

But though this is the creed of the Church of Rome, from 
whence the Protestants borrowed it, it is a creed which that 
church has manufactured of itself, for it is not contained in, 
nor derived from, the book called the New Testament. 
The four books called the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John, which give, or pretend to give, the birth, 
sayings, life, preaching, and death of Jesus Christ, make no 
mention of what is called the fall of man, nor is the name of 
Adam to be found in any of those books, which it certainly 
would be if the writers of them believed that Jesus was be- 
gotten, born, and died for the purpose of redeeming man- 
kind from the sin which Adam had brought into the world. 
Jesus never speaks of Adam himself, of the Garden of Eden, 
nor of what is called the fall of man. Neither did theearly 
Christians believe the story of the fail of man to be fact, but 
held it to be allegory. The person called St. Augustine, says 
in his City of God, that the adventure of Eve and the serpent, 
and the account of Paradise, were generally considered in 
his time as allegory, and he treats them as such himself 
without attempting to give any explanation of them, but 
thinks a better might be given than had been offered. 

Origen, another of the ancient fathers of the Church, treats 
the account of the creation in Genesis, and the story of the 
Garden of Eden and the fall of man, as fable or fiction. 

What man of good sense, says he, can ever persuade him- 
self that there was a first, a second, and a third day, and (hat 
each of those days had a night, when there was yet neither 
sun, moon, nor stars'. (N. B. According to the account in 
Genesis, chap, i, the sun and moon was not made until the 
fourth day) — What man, continues he can be stupid enough 
to believe that God actrag the part of a gardener had 
planted a garden in the east; that the tree of life was a real 
tree, and that the fruit of it had the virtue of making those 
who eat of it live for ever. 

The Jews did not believe the first chapters_of Genesis to 
be fact. Maimonides, one of the most learned and cele- 
brated of the Jewish authors who lived in tfe& eleventh cen- 
tury, says, in his book MORE nebachim : ' vVe ought not to 
understand nor take according to the letter that which is 
written in the book of the creation, (the hotfk of Genesis.) 
Taken, says he, according to the letter, especially with res- 



44 DEISM COMPARED WITH CHRISTIANITY. 



pect to the work of four days, it gives the most absurd aud 
extravagant ideas of God. 

But the Church of Rome having set up its new religion 
which it called Christianity, and invented the creed which 
is named the Apostles creed, in which it calls Jesus the only 
son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the 
Virgin Mary, things of which it is impossible that man or 
woman can have any idea, and consequently no belief but 
in words, and for which there is no authority but the idle 
story of Joseph's dream in the first chapter of Matthew, 
which any designing impostor or foolish fanatic might make, 
it then manufactured the allegories in the book of Genesis 
into fact, and the allegorical tree of life aud tree of knowledge 
into real trees, contrary to the belief of the first Christians, 
aud for which there is not the least authority in any of the 
books of the New Testament, for in none of them is there 
any mention made of such place as the Garden of Eden, nor 
of any thing that is said to have happened there. 

But the Church of Rome could not erect the person called 
Jesus into a Saviour of the world without making the alle- 
gories in the book of Genesis into fact, though the New 
Testament, as before observed, gives no authority for it. All 
at once the allegorical tree of knowledge became, according 
to the church, a real tree, the fruit of it real, fruit, and the 
eating of it sinful. As priestcraft was always the enemy of 
knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping 
people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its 
policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin. 

The Church of Rome having done this, it then brings for- 
ward Jesus the son of Mary as suffering death to redeem 
mankind from sin, which Adam, it says, had brought into 
the world by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. 
But as it is impossible for reason to believe such a story 
because it can see no reason for it, nor have any evidence 
of it, the church then tells us we must not regard our reason, 
but must believe, as it were, and that through thick and thin, 
as if God had given man reason like a play-thing, or a rat- 
tle, on purpose to make fun of him. Reason is the forbid- 
den tree of priestcraft, and may serve to explain the allegory 
of the forbidden tree of knowledge, for we may reasonably 
suppose the allegory had some meaning and application at 
the time it was invented. It was the practice of the eastern 
nations to convey their meaning by allegory, and relate it 
in the manner of fact. Jesus followed the same method, 
yet nobody ever supposed the allegory or parable of the 



DEISM COMPARED WITH CHRISTIANITY. 



45 



rich man and Lazarus, the Prodigal Son, the ten Virgins, 
&c. were facts. Why then should the tree of knowledge, 
which is far more romantic in idea than the parables in the 
New Testament are, be supposed to be a real tree*. The 
answer to this is, because the church could not make its new 
fangled system, which it called Christianity, hold together 
without it. To have made Christ to die on account of an 
allegorical tree, would have been too bare-faced a fable. 

But the account, as it is given of Jesus in the New Testa- 
ment, even visionary as it is, does not support the creed of 
the church that he died for the redemption of the world. 
According to that account he was crucified and buried on 
the Friday and rose again in good health on the Sunday 
morning, for we do not hear that he was sick. This cannot 
be called dying, and is rather making fun of death than suf- 
fering it. There are thousands of men and women also, who, 
if they could know they should come back again in good 
health in about thirty-six hours, would prefer such kind of 
death for the sake of the experiment, and to know what the 
other side of the grave was. Why then should that which 
would be only a voyage of curious amusement to us be 
magnified into merit and sufferings in him ? If a God he 
could not suffer death, for immortality cannot die, and as a 
man his death could be no more than the death of any other 
person. 

The belief of the redemption of Jesus Christ is altogether 
an invention of the Church of Rome and not the doctrine of 
the New Testament. What the writers of the New Testa- 
ment attempt to prove by the story of Jesus is, the resurrec- 
tion of the same body from the grave, which was the belief 
of the Pharisees, in opposition to the Sadducees (a sect of Jews) 
who denied it. Paul, who was brought up a Pharisee, labours 
hard at this point, for it was the creed of his own Pharisaical 
church. The xv. chap. I of Corinthians is full of supposed 
cases and assertions about the resurrection of the same body, 
but there is not a Word in it about redemption. This chap- 
ter makes part of the funeral service of the Episcopal church. 
The dogma of the redemption is the fable of priestcraft in- 
vented since the time the New Testament was compiled, and 
the agreeable delusion of it suited with the depravity of im- 
moral livers. When men are taught to ascribe all their 

* The remark of Emperor Julian, or. the story of the Tree of Knowledge 
is worth observing. " If," said he, " there ever had been, or could be, a 
Tree of Knowledge, instead of God forbidding man to eat thereof, it would 
be that of which he would order him to eat the most." 



46 



DEISM COMPARED WITH CHRISTIANITY. 



crimes and vices to the temptations of the devil, and to be 
lieve that Jesus, by his death, rubs all off and pays their 
passage to heaven gratis, they become as careless in morals 
as a spendthrift would be of money, were he told that his 
father had engaged to pay off all his scores. It is a doctrine, 
not only dangerous to morals in this world, but to our happi- 
ness in the next world, because it holds out such a cheap, 
easy, and lazy way of getting to heaven as has a tendency 
to iuduce men to hug the delusion of it to their own injury. 

But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and 
it is-at such times when they begin to think, that they begin 
to doubt the truth of the Christian Religion, and well they 
may, for it is too fauciful, and too full of conjecture, incon- 
sistency, improbability, and irrationality, to afford cousola- 
tion to the thoughtful man. His reason revolts against his 
creed. He sees that none of its articles are proved, or can 
be proved. He may believe that such a person as is called 
Jesus (for Christ was not his name) was born and grew to 
be a man, because it is no more than a natural and probable 
case. But who is to prove he is the sou of God, that he 
was begotten by the Holy Ghost? Of these things there can 
be no proof, and that which admits not of proof, and is 
against the laws of probability and the order of nature, 
which God himself has established, isnotan object for belief. 
God has not given man reason to embarrass him, but to 
prevent his being imposed upon. 

He may believe that Jesus was crucified, because many 
others were crucified, but who is to prove he was crucified 
for the sins of the xvorld? This article has no evidence not 
even in the New Testament ; and if it had, where is the proof 
that the New Testament, in relating things neither probable 
nor proveable, is to be believed as true? When an article 
in a creed does not admit of truth norof probability thesalvo 
is to call it revelation ; but this is only putting one difficulty 
in the place of another, for it is as impossible to prove a 
thing to be revelation as it is to prove that Mary was gotten 
with child by the Holy Ghost. 

Here it is that the religion of Deism is superior to the 
Christian religion. It is free from all those invented and 
torturing articles that shock, our reason or injure our huma- 
nity, and with which the Christian religion abounds. Its 
creed is pure and sublimely simple. It believes in God and 
there it rests. It honours reason as the choicest gift of God 
to man, aud the faculty by which he is enabled to contem- 
plate the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator dis- 



HINTS TOWARDS FORMING A SOCIETY. 



47 



played in the creation; and reposing itself on his protection, 
both here and hereafter, it avoids all presumptuous beliefs, 
and rejects, as the fabulous inventions of men, all books 
pretending to revelation. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



HINTS TOWARDS FORMING A SOCIETY FOR ENQUIRING 
INTO THE TRUTH OR FALSEHOOD OF ANCIENT HISTO- 
RY, SO FAR AS HISTORY IS CONNECTED WITH SYSTEMS 
OF RELIGION ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



It has been customary to class History into three divisions, 
distinguished by the names of Sacred, Prophane, and Ec- 
clesiastical. By the first is meant the Bible; bythesecond, 
the history of nations, of men and things; and by the third, 
the history of the church and its priesthood. Nothing is 
more easy than to give names, and therefore mere uames 
signity nothing unless they lead to the discovery of some 
cause for which that name was given. For example, Sun- 
day is the name given to the first day of the week, in the 
English language, and it is the same in the Latin, that is, it 
has the same meaning, (Dies Solis ) and also in the German, 
and in several other languages. Why then was this name 
given to that day? Because it was the day dedicated by 
the ancient world to the luminary, which in English we call 
the Sun, and therefore the day Sunday, or the day of the 
Sun; as in the like manner we call the second day Monday, 
the day dedicated to the Moon. 

Here the name, Sunday, leads to the cause of its being 
called so, and we have visible evidence of the fact, because 
we behold the Sun from whence the name comes; but this 
is not the case when we distinguish ore part of history from 
another by the name of sacred. All histories have been 
written by men. We have no evidence, nor any cause to 
believe, that any have been written by God. That part of 
the Bible called the Old Testament, is the History of the 
Jewish nation, from the time of Abraham, which begins iu 
the llth chap, of Genesis, to the downfall of that nation by 
Nebuchadnezzar, and is no more entitled to be called sacred 
than any other history. It is altogether the contrivance of 
priestcraft that has given it that name. So far from its be- 
ing sacred it has not the appearance of being true in many 
of the things it relates. It must be better authority than a 



48 



HINTS TOWARDS FORMING A SOCIETY. 



book, which any impostor might make, as Mahomet made 
the Koran; to make a thoughtful man believe that the Sun 
and Moon stood still, or that Moses and Aaron turned the 
Nile, which is larger than the Delaware, into blood, and that 
the Egyptian magicians did the same. These things have 
too much the appearance of romance to be believed for fact. 

It would be of use to enquire, and ascertain the time, when 
that part of the Bible called the Old Testament first appeared. 
From all that can be collected there was no such book till 
after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, and that 
it is the work of the Pharisees of the second Temple. How 
they came to make the 1 9th chapter of the 2d book of Kings, 
and the 37th of Isaiah, word for word alike, can only be ac- 
counted for by their having no plan to go by, and not know- 
ing what they were about. The same is the case with respect 
to the last verses in the 2d book of Chronicles, and the first 
verses in Ezra, they also are word for word alike, which 
shews that the Bible has been put together at random. 

But, besides these things, there is great reason to believe 
we have been imposed upon, with respect to the antiquity 
of the Bible, and especially with respect to the books as- 
cribed to Moses. Herodotus, who is called the father of his- 
tory, and is the most ancient historian whose works have 
reached to our time, and who travelled into Egypt, con- 
versed with the priests, historians, astronomers, and learned 
men of that country, for the purpose of obtaining all the in- 
formation of it he could, and who gives an account of the 
ancient state of it, makes no mention of such a man as Moses, 
though the Bible makes him to have been the greatest hero 
there, nor of any one circumstance mentioned in the book 
of Exodus, respecting Egypt, such as turning the rivers into 
blood, the dust into lice, the death of the first born through- 
out all the land of Egypt, the passage of the Red-Sea, the 
drowning of Pharaoh and all his host, things which could 
not have been a secret in Egypt, and must have been gene- 
rally known, had they been facts; and therefore as no such 
things were known in Egypt, nor any such man as Moses; 
at the time Herodotus was there, which is about two thou- 
sand two hundred years ago, it shews that the account of 
these things in the book ascribed to Moses is a made story 
of latter times, that is, after the return of the Jews from the 
Babylonian captivity, and that Moses is not the author of 
the books ascribed to him. 

With respect to the cosmogony, or account of the crea- 
tion, in the first chapter of Genesis, of the Garden of Eden 



HINTS TOWARDS FORMING A SOCIETY. 



49 



in the second chapter, and of what is called the fall of man 
in the third chapter, there is something concerning them we 
are not historically acquainted with. In none of the books 
of the Bible, after Genesis, are any of these things mentioned, 
or even alluded to. How is this to be accounted for? The 
obvious inference is, that either they were not known, or not 
believed to be facts, by the writers of the other books of the 
Bible, and that Moses is not the author of the chapters 
where these accounts are given. 

The next question on the case is, how did the Jews come 
by these notions and at what time were they written? 

To answer this question we must first consider what the 
state of the world was at the time the Jews began to be a 
people, for the Jews are but a modern race, compared with 
the antiquity of other nations. Atthe time there were, even 
by their own account, but thirteen Jews or Israelites in the 
world, Jacob and his twelve sons, and four of these were 
bastards. The nations of Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, and In- 
dia, were great and populous, abounding in learning and 
science, particularly in the knowledge of astronomy of which 
the Jews were always ignorant. The chronological tables 
mention, that Eclipses were observed at Babylon above two 
thousand years before the Christian era, which was before 
there was a single Jew or Israelite in the world. 

All those ancient nations had their cosmogonies, that is 
their accounts, how the creation was made, long before there 
was such people as Jews or Israelites. An account of the 
cosmogonies of India and Persia is given by Henry Lord, 
Chaplain to the East India Company, at Surat, and publish- 
ed in London, 1630. The writer of this has seen a copy 
of theedition of 1630,and made extracts from it. The work, 
which is now scarce, was dedicated by Lord to the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. 

We know that the Jews were carried captives into Babylon, 
by Nebuchadnezzar, and remained in captivity several years, 
when they were liberated by Cyrus, king of Persia. During 
their captivity they would have had an opportunity of acqui- 
ring some knowledge of the cosmogony of the Persians, or 
at least of getting some ideas how to fabricate one to put at 
the head of their own history after their return from captivity. 
This will account for the cause, for some cause there must 
have been, that no mention nor reference is made to the 
cosmogony in Genesis in any of the books of the Bible, sup- 
posed to have been written before the captivity, nor is the 
name of Adam to be found in anv of those books. 
7 



50 



HINTS TOWARDS FORMING A SOCIETY. 



The Books of Chronicles were written after the return of 
the Jews from captivity, for the third chapter of the first 
book gives a list of all the Jewish Kings from David to 
Zedekiah, who was carried captive to Babylon, and to four 
generations beyond the time of Zedekiah. In the first 
verse of the first chapter of this book the name of Adam 
is mentioned, but not in any book in the Bible, written 
before that time, nor could it be, for Adam and Eve are 
names taken from the cosmogony of the Persians. Henry 
Lord, in his book, written from Surat, and dedicated, as I 
have already said, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, says 
that in the Persian cosmogony, the name of the first man 
was Adamoh and of the woman Hevah* From hence comes 
the Adam and Eve of the book of Genesis. In the cosmo- 
gony of India, of which I shall speak in a future Number, the 
name of the first man was Pourous, and of the woman Par- 
coutee. We want a knowledge of the Sanscrit language of 
India to understand the meaning of the names, and I men- 
tion it in this place, only to show that it is from the cosmog- 
ony of Persia rather than that of India that the cosmogony 
in Genesis has been fabricated by the Jews, who returned 
from captivity by the liberality of Cyrus, King of Persia. 
There is, however, reason to conclude on the authority of 
Sir William Jones, who resided several years in India, that 
these names were very expressive in the language to which 
they belonged, for in speaking of this language he says (see 
the Asiatic Researches) " The Sanscrit language, whatever 
be its antiquity, is of wonderful structure; it is more perfect 
than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more 
exquisitely refined than either." 

These hints, which are intended to be continued, will 
serve to shew that a society for enquiring into the ancient 
state of the world, and the state of ancient history, so far as 
history is connected with systems of religion, ancient and 
modern, may become a useful and instructive institution. 
There is good reason to believe we have been in great error, 
with respect to the antiquity of the Bible, as well as imposed 
upon by its contents. Truth ought to be the object of every 
man ; for without truth there can be no real happiness to a 
thoughtful mind, nor any assurance of happiness hereafter. 
It is the duty of man to obtain all the knowledge he can, 
and then make the best use of it. 

THOMAS PAINE. 

* In an English edition of the Bible, in 1533, the first woman is called 
Hevah. 



I 



TO MR. MOORE, OF NEW YORK, COMMONLY CALLED 
BISHOP MOORE. 



I have read in the newspapers your account of the visit 
you made to the unfortunate General Hamilton, and of ad- 
ministering to him a ceremony of your church which you 
call the Holy Communion. 

I regret the fate of General Hamilton, and I so far hope 
with you that it will be a warning to thoughtless man not to 
sport away the life that God has given him ; but with respect 
to other parts of your letter I think it very reprehensible 
and betrays great ignorance of what true religion is. But 
you are a priest, you get your living by it, aud it is not your 
worldly interest to undeceive yourself. 

After giving an account of your administering to the 
deceased what you call the Holy Communion, you add, 
" By reflecting on this melancholy event let the humble 
believer be encouraged ever to hold fast that precious faith 
which is the only source of true consolation in the last ex- 
tremity of nature. Let the infidel be persuaded to abandon 
bis opposition to the Gospel." 

To shew you, Sir, that your promise of consolation from 
Scripture has no foundation to stand upon, I will cite to you 
one of the greatest falsehoods upon record, and which was 
given, as the record says, for the purpose, and as a promise, 
of consolation. 

In the Epistle called " the First Epistle of Paul to the 
Thessalonians," (chap. 4.) the writer consoles the Thessa- 
lonians as to the case of their friends who were already dead. 
He does this by informing them, and he does it, he says, by 
the word of the Lord, (a most notorious falsehood) that the 
general resurrection of the dead, and the ascension of the 
living, will be in his and their days: that their friends will 
then come to life again; that the dead in Christ will rise 
first — " Then WE (says he, ver. 17) which " are alive and 
remain shall be caught up together with THEM in the 
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be 
with the Lord — Wherefore comfort one another with these 
words." 

Delusion and falsehood cannot be carried higher than they 
are in this passage. You, Sir, are but a novice in the art. 
The words admit of no equivocation. The whole passage 
is in the first person and the prsent tense, " We which are 



52 



TO MR. MOORE, OF NEW YORK. 



alive.''' Had the writer meant a future time, and a distant 
generation, it must have been in the third person and the 
future tense, " They who shall then be alive." I am thus 
particular for the purpose of nailing you down to the text, 
that you may not ramble from it, nor put other constructions 
upon the words than they will bear, which priests are very 
apt to do. 

Now, Sir, it is impossible for serious man, to whom God 
has given the divine gift of reason, and who employs that 
reason to reverence and adore the God that gave it, it is, i 
say, impossible for such a person to put confidence in a 
book that abounds with fable and falsehood as the New 
Testament does. This passage is but a sample of what 1 
could give you. 

You call on those whom you stile " infidels," (and they in 
return might call you an idolator, a worshipper of false Gods, 
a preacher of false doctrine) " to abandon their opposition to 
the Gospel." Prove, Sir, the Gospel to be true, and the oppo- 
sition wili cease of itself; but until you do this, (which we 
know you cannot do) you have no right to expect they will 
notice your call. If by infidels you mean Deists, (and you 
must be exceedingly ignorant of the orign of the word Deist, 
and know but little of Deus, to put that construction upon it) 
you will find yourself over-matched if you begin to engage 
in a controversy wilh them. Priests may dispute with priests, 
and sectaries with sectaries, about the meaning of what they 
agree to call Scripture and end as they began; but when 
you engage with a Deist you must keep to fact. Now, Sir, 
you cannot prove a single article of your religiou to be true, 
and we tell you so publicly. Do it, if you can. The De- 
istical article, the belief of a God, with which your creed 
begins, has been borrowed by your church from the ancient 
Deists, and even this article you dishonour by putting a 
dream-begotten Phantom* which you call his Son over bis 
head, and treating God as if he Was superannuated. Deism 
is the only profession of religion that admits of worshipping 
and reverencing God in purity, and the only one on which 
the thoughtful mind can repose with undisturbed tranquil- 
lity. God is almost forgotten in the Christian religion. 

* The first chapter of Matthew, relates that Joseph, the betrothed hus- 
band of Mary, dreamed that an ansel told him that his intended bride was 
with child by the Holy Ghost. It is not every husband, whether carpen- 
ter or priest, that can be so easily satisfied, for lo ! it was a dream. Whether 
Mary was in a dream when this was done we are not told. It is, how- 
ever, a ccmical story. There is no woman living can understand it. As for 
priests it is quite out of their way. 



TO THE REVEREND JOHN MASON. 



53 



Every thing, even the creation, is ascribed to the son of 
Mary. 

In religion, as in every thing else, perfection consists in 
simplicity. The Christian religion of Gods within, Gods, 
like wheels within wheels, is like a complicated machine 
that never goes right, and every projector in the art of 
Christianity is trying to mend it. It is its defects that have 
caused such a number and variety of (inkers to be hammer- 
ing at it, and still it goes wrong. In the visible world no 
time-keeper can go equally true with the sun; and in like 
manner, no complicated religion can be equally true with 
the pure and unmixed religion of Deism. 

Had you not offensively glanced at a description of men 
whom you call by a false name, you would not have been 
troubled nor honoured with this address; neither has the wri- 
ter of it any desire or intention to enter into controversy with 
you. He thinks the temporal establishment of your church 
politically unjust and offensively unfair; but with respect 
to religion itself, distinct from temporal establishments, he is 
happv in the enjoyment of his own, and he leaves you to 
make the best vou can of yours. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



TO THE REVEREND JOHN MASON, 

ONE OF THE MINISTERS OF THE SCOTCH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
OF NEW YORK ; WITH REMARKS ON HIS ACCOUNT OF THE VI- 
SIT HE MADE TO THE LATE GENERAL HAMILTON. 



" Come now, let us reason together', saith the Lord." 
This is one of the passages you quoted from your Bible, in 
your conversation with General Hamilton, as given in your 
letter, signed with your name, and published in the Commer- 
cial Advertiser, and other New York papers, and I re-quote 
the passage to- shew that your Text and your Religion con- 
tradict each Other. 

It is impossible to reason upon things not comprehensible 
by reason; and therefore, if you keep to your text, which 
priests seldom do, (for they are generally either above it, 
or below it, or forget it ) you must admit a religion to which 
reason can apply, and this, certainly, is not the Christian 
religion. 

There is not an article in the Christian religion that is coo-- 
uizable by reason. The Deisfical article of your religion, 
the belief of a God, is no more a Christian article, than it is 



54 



TO THE REVEREND JOHN MASON. 



a Mahometan article. It is an universal article, common to 
all religions, and which is held in greater purity by Turks 
than by Christians; but the Deistical church is the only one 
which holds it in real purity; because that church acknow- 
ledges no co-partnership with God. It believes in him 
solely; and knows nothing of Sons, married Virgins, nor 
Ghosts. It holds all these things to be the fables of priest- 
craft. 

Why then do you talk of reasoD, or refer to it, since your 
religion has nothing to do with reason, nor reason with that. 
You tell people, as you told Hamilton, that they must have 
faith Faith in what? You ought to know that before the 
mind can have faith in any thing, it must either know it as 
a fact, or see cause to believe it on the probability of that 
kind of evidence that is cognizable by reason: but your re- 
ligion is not within either of these cases; for, in the first 
place, you cannot prove it to be fact; and in the second 
place, you cannot support it by reason, not only because it 
is not cognizable by reason, but because it is contrary to 
reason. What reason can there be in supposing, or believ- 
ing, that God put himself to death, to satisfy himself, and 
be revenged on the Devil on account of Adam; for tell the 
story which way you will it comes to this at last. 

As you can make no appeal to reason in support of an 
unreasonable religion, you then (and others of your profes- 
sion) bring yourselves off by telling people, they must not 
believe in reason but in revelation. This is the artifice of 
habit without reflection. It is putting words in the place of 
things; for do you not see, that when you tell people to be- 
lieve in revelation, you must first prove that what you call 
revelation, is revelation ; and as you cannot do this, you 
put the word, which is easily spoken, in the place of the 
thing you cannot prove. You have no more evidence that 
your Gospel is revelation than the Turks have that their Koran 
is revelation, and the only difference between tbem and you 
is, that they preach their delusion and you preach yours. 

In your conversation with General Hamilton, you say to 
him, " The simple truths of the Gospel which require no ab- 
struse investigation, but faith in the veracity of God, who 
cannot lie, are best suited to your present condition." 

If those matters you call " simple truths," are what you 
call them, and require no abstruse investigation, they 
would be so obvious that reason would easily comprehend 
them.; yet the doctrine you preach at other times is, that 
the mysteries of the Gospel are beyond the reach of reason. 



TO THE REVEREND JOHN MASON. 



55 



If your first position be true, that they are " simple truths" 
priests are unnecessary, for we do not wantpreachers to tell us 
the sun shines: and if your second be true, the case, as to 
effect, is the same, for it is waste of money to pay a man to 
explain unexplaiuable things, and loss of time to listen to 
him. That " God cannot lie" is no advantage to your 
argument, because it is no proof that priests cannot, or that 
the Bible does not. Did not Paul lie when he told the Tbes- 
salonians that the general resurrection of the dead would be 
in his life-time, and that he should go up alive alone- with 
them into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. 1 Thess. 
chap, iv, ver. 27. 

You spoke of what you call, " the precious blood of Christ." 
This savage stile of language belongs to the priests of the 
Christian religion. The professors of this religion say they 
are shocked at the accounts of human sacrifices of which 
they read in the histories of some countries. Do they not 
see that their own religion is founded on a human sacrifice, 
the blood of man, of which their priests talk like so many 
butchers. It is no wonder the Christian religion has been 
so bloody in its effects, for it began in blood, and many 
thousands of human sacrifices have since been offered on the 
altar of the Christian religion. 

It is necessary to the character of a religion, as being 
true, and immutable as God himself is, that the evidences of 
it be equally the same through all periods of time and cir- 
cumstance. This is not the case with the Christian religion, 
nor with that of the Jews that preceded it, (for there was a 
time, and that within the knowledge of history, when these re- 
ligions did not exist) nor of Deism. In this the evidences 
are eternal and universal. — " The Heavens declare the glory 
of God, arid the firmament sheweth his handy work, — Day 
unto day uttereth speech, and ?iight unto night sheweth 
knowledge-^." But all other religions are made to arise 

* This Psalm (19) which is a Deistical Psalm, is so much in the manner 
of some parts of the book of Job, (which is not a book of the Jews, and 
does not belong to the Bible) that it has the appearance of having been 
translated into Hebrew from the same language in which the book of Job 
was originally written, and brought by the Jews from Chaldea or Persia, 
when they returned from captivity. The contemplation of the Heavens 
made a great part of the religious devotion of the Chaldeans and Persians, 
and their religious festivals were regulated by the progress of the sun 
through the twelve signs of the Zodiac. But the Jews knew nothing about 
the Heavens, or they would not have told the foolish story of the sun's 
standing still upon a hill, and the moon in a valley. What could they want 
the moon for in the day-time ? 



L.of C. 



56 TO THE ftEVIi REND JOHN MASON. 

from some local circumstance, and are introduced by some 
temporary trifle which its partisans call a miracle, but of 
which there is no proof but the story of it. 

The Jewish religion, according to the history of it, began 
in a 70ilderness, and the Christian religion, in a stable. The 
Jewish books tell us of wonders exhibited upon Mount 
Sinai. It happeued that nobody lived there to contradict 
the account. The Christian books tell us of a star that 
hung over the stable at the birth of Jesus. There is no star 
there now, nor any person living that saw it. But all the 
stars in the Heavens bear eternal evidence to the truth of 
Deism. It did not begin in a stable, nor in a wilderness. 
It began every where. The theatre of the universe is the 
place of its birth. 

As adoration paid to any being but GOD himself is ido- 
latry, the Christian religion by paying adoration to a man, 
born of a woman, called Mary, belongs to the idolatrous 
class of religions, and consequently the consolation drawn 
from it is delusion. Betsveen you and your rival in com- 
munion ceremonies, Dr. Moore, of the Episcopal church, 
you have, in order to make yourselves appear of some im- 
portance, reduced General Hamilton's character to that of 
of a feeble-minded man, who in going out of the world 
wanted a passport from a priest. Which of you was first or 
last applied to for this purpose is a matter of no consequence. 

The man, Sir, who puts his trust and confidence in God, 
that leads a just and moral life, and endeavours to do good, 
does not trouble himself about priests when his hour of de- 
parture comes, nor permit priests to trouble themselves about 
him. They are, in general, mischievous beings where cha- 
racter is concerned; a consultation of priests is worse than 
a consultation of physicians. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

ADDRESSED TO THE BELIEVERS IN THE BOOK CALLED THE 
SCRIPTURES. 



The New Testament contains twenty-seven books, of which 
four are called Gospels; one called the Acts of the Apos- 
tles; fourteen called Epistles of Paul; one of James; two 
of Peter; three of John; one of Jude; one called the Re- 
velation. 



OF THE BOOKS OF THE JdEVV TESTAMENT. 57 



None of those books have the appearance of being writ- 
ten by the persons whose name they bear, neither do we know 
who the authors were. They come to us on no other au- 
thority than the church of Rome, which the Protestant 
Priests, especially those of New England, call the Whore of 
Babylon. This church, or, to use their own vulgar lan- 
guage, this Whore, appointed sundry Councils to be held, 
to compose creeds for the people, and to regulate church 
affairs. Two of ihe principal of these Councils were that 
of Nice, and of Laodicea, (names of the places where the 
councils were held) about three hundred and fifty years 
after the time that Jesus is said to have lived. Before this 
time there was no such book as the New Testament. But 
the church could not well go on without having something 
to shew, as the Persians shewed the Zendavesta, revealed, 
they say, by God to Zoroaster; the Bramins of India, the 
Shaster, revealed, they say by God to Rruma, and given 
to him out of a dusky cloud; the Jews, the books they call 
the Law of Moses, given they say also out of a cloud on 
Mount Sinai; the church set about forming a code for itself 
out of such materials as it could find or pick up. But where 
they got those materials, in what language they were written, 
or whose hand writing they were, or whether they were 
originals or copies, or on what authority they stood, we 
know nothing of, nor does the New Testament tell us. The 
church was resolved to have a New Testament and as after 
the lapse of more than three hundred years no handwriting 
could be proved or disproved, the church, which like former 
impostors, had then gotten possession of the state, had every 
thing its own way. It invented creeds, such as that called 
the Apostles Creed, the Niceau Creed, the Athanasian Creed, 
and out of the loads of rubbish that were presented, it voted 
four to be Gospels, and others to be Epistles as we now find 
them -arranged. 

Of those called Gospels above forty were presented, each 
pretending to be genuine. Four only were voted in, and en- 
titled, the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the Gospel ac- 
cording to St. Mark. The Gospel according to St. Luke. 
The Gospel according to St. John. 

This word according shews that those books have not 
been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but ac- 
cording to some accounts or traditions, picked up concern- 
ing them. The word according means agreeing x&ith, and 
necessarily includes the idea of two things, or two persons. 
We cannot say, The Gospel written by Matthew according 
to Matthew; but we might say, the Gospel of some other 
8 



58 OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



person, according to what was reported to have been the 
opinion of Matthew. Now we do not know who those 
other persons were, nor whether what they wrote accorded 
with any thing that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John might 
have said. There is too little evidence, and too much con- 
trivance about those books to merit credit. 

The next book after those called Gospels, is that called the 
Acts of the Apostles. This book isanonymous; neither do the 
Councils that compiled or contrived the New Testament 
tell us how they came by it. The church to supply this 
defect^says it was written by Luke, which shews that the 
church and its priests have not compared that called the 
Gospel according to St. Luke, and the acts together, for the 
two contradict each other. The book of Luke, chap. 24, 
makes Jesus ascend into heaven the very same day that it 
makes him rise from the dead. The book of Acts, chap. i. 
ver. 3, says, that he remained on the earth forty days after 
his crucifixion. There is no believing what either of them 
says. 

The next to the book of acts is that entitled " The Epistle 
of Paul the Apostle* to the Romans." This is notau-Epis- - 
tie or letter, written by Paul or signed by him. It is an 
Epistle, or letter, written by a person who. signs himself 
Tertius, and sent it as it is said at the end, by a servant 
woman called Phcebe. The last chapter, ver. 22, says, " I 
Tertius, who wrote this Epistle, salute you." Who Tertius 
or Phcebe were, we know nothing of. The Epistle is not 
dated. The whole of it is written in the first person, and 
that person is Tertius, not Paul. But it suited the church 
to ascribe it to Paul. There is nothing in it that is in- 
teresting except it be to contending and wrangling sectaries. 
The stupid metaphor of the potter and the clay is in the 
9th chap. 

The next book is entitled " The first Epistle of Paul the 
Apostle, to the Corinthians." This, like the former, is not an 
epistle written by Paul, nor signed by him. The conclusion 
of the epistle says, " The first epistle to the Corinthians was 
written from Philippi, by Stepbenas and Fortunatus and 
Achicus and Timotheus." The second epistle entitled, 
" The second Epistle of Paul the Apostle, to the Corinthians," 
is in the same case with the first. The conclusion of it says, 

* According to the criterion of the church, Paul was not an apostle ; 
that appellation being given only to those called the twelve. Two sailors 
belonging to a man of war got into dispute upon this point, whether Paul 
was an apostle or not, and they agreed to refer it to the Boatswain, who 
decided very amonically that Paul was an acting apostle but not rated. 



OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT*. 



59 



" It was written from Philippi, a city of Macedonia, by 
Titus aud Lucas." 

A question may arise upon these cases, which is, are 
these persons the writers of the epistles originally, or are 
they the writers and attestors of copies sent to the councils 
who compiled the code or, canon of the New Testament? If 
the episties had been dated this question could be decided; 
but in either of the cases the evidences of Paul's hand writ- 
ing- and of their being written by him is wanting, and there- 
fore there is no authority for calling them Epistles of Paul. 
We know not whose Epistles they were, nor whether they 
are genuine or forged. 

The next is entitled, " The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to 
the Galatians." It contains six short chapters, yet the writer 
of it says, chap. vi. ver. 11. " Ye see how large a letter I 
have written to you with my own hand." If Paul was the writer 
of this it shews he did not accustom himself to write long 
epistles; yet the epistle to the Romans, and the first to the 
Corinthians contains sixteen chapters each. The second to 
the Corinthians, and that to the Hebrews thirteen chapters 
each. There is something contradictory in these matters. 
But short as the epistle to the Galatians is, it does not car- 
ry the appearance of being the work or composition of one 
person. The fifth chap. ver. 2, says, " If ye be circumcised 
Christ shall avail you nothing." It does not say circumcision 
shall profit you nothing, but Christ shall profit you nothing. 
Yet in the sixth chap. ver. 15, it says, " For in Christ Jesus 
neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircum- 
sion but a new creature." These are not reconcileable 
passages nor can contrivance make them so. The conclu- 
sion of the epistle says, it was written from Rome, but it is 
not dated, nor is there any signature to it, neither do the 
compilers of the New Testament say how they came by it. 
We are in the dark upon all these matters. 

The next is entitled. "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to 
the Ephesians." This like that of the Galatians, contains 
six short chapters, but Paul is not the writer. The conclu- 
sion of it says, " Written from Rome unto the Ephesians 
by Tychicus." 

The next is entitled, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostie 
to the Philippians." This Epistle contains but four short 
chapters, aud occupies only four octavo pages. But of this, 
short as it is, Paul is not the writer. The conclusion of it 
says, " It was written to \he Phil'ppians from Rome, by 
Epaphroditus." It is not dated. Query, were those men 
who wrote' aud signed those Epistles, journeymen Apostles 



CO 



OF THF BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



who undertook to write in Paul's name, as Paul is said to 
have preached in Christ's name? 

The next is entitled, " The Epistle of Paul the Apostle, to 
the Colossians." This Epistle like the former, contains only 
four short chapters, but Paul is not the writer. Doctor 
Luke is spoken of in this Epistle as sending his compliments. 
" Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you." 
Chap. 4, ver. 14. It does not say a word about his writing 
any Gospel. The conclusion of the Epistle says, " Written 
from Rome to the Colossians, by Tychicus and Onesimus." 

Thenext is entitled, " The first Epistle of Paul the Apos- 
tle, to the Thessalonians." It contains five short chapters, 
and the second Epistle contains three still shorter. Either 
the writer of these Epistles was a visionary enthusiast, or a 
direct impostor, for he tells the Thessalonians, and, he says, 
he tells them by the word of the Lord, that the world will 
beat an end in bis and their time; and after telling them 
that those who are already dead shall rise, he adds, chap. 4, 
ver. 17, "Then we which are alive and remain shall be 
caught up with them into the clouds to meet the Lord in the 
air, and so shall we be ever.with the Lord." Such detected 
lies as these ought to fill priests with confusion, , when they 
preach such books to be the word of God. These two 
Epistles are said, in the conclusions of them, to be written 
from Athens. They are without date or signatures. 

The next four Epistles are private letters. Two of them 
are to Timothy, one to Titus, one to Philemon. Who they 
were nobody knows. 

The first to Timothy contains six short chapters, and is 
said to be written from Laodicea. It is without date or 
signature. The second to Timothy contains four short chap- 
ters. It is said to be written from Rome, and is without 
date or signature. The Epistle to Titus contains three 
chapters. It is said to be written from Nicopolis in Mace- 
donia. It is without date or signature. The Epistle to 
Philemon contains one chapter. It is said to be written 
from Rome by Onesimus. It is without date. 

The last Epistle ascribed to Paul is entitled, " The Epis- 
tle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews." It contains thirteen 
chapters, and is said in the conclusion to be written from 
Italy, by Timothy. This Timothy (according to the con- 
clusion of the Epistle called the second Epistle of Paul 
to Timothy) was bishop of the church of the Ephesians, 
and consequently this is not an Epistle of Paul. 

On what slender cob-web evidence do the priests and 
professors of the Christian religion hang their faith ! The 



REMARKS ON A PASSAGE OF PAUL. 



61 



same degree of hear say evidence, and that at a third and 
fourth hand, would not in a court of justice, give a man 
a title to a cottage, and yet the priests of this profession pre- 
sumptuously promise their deluded followers the kingdom of 
Heaven. A little reflection would teach men that those books 
are Dot to be trusted to ; that so far from there being any proof 
that they are the word of God, it is unkuown who the wri- 
ters of them were, or at what time they were writtep, within 
three hundred, years after the reputed authors are sai.d to 
have lived. It is not the interest of priests, who get their 
living by them, to examine into the insufficiency of the evi- 
dence upon which those books were received by the Popish 
councils who compiled the New Testament. But if Messrs. 
Linn and Mason would occupy themselves upon this sub- 
ject (it signifies not which side they take, for the event will 
be the same) they would be better employed than they 
were last presidential election, in writing Jesuitical election- 
eering pamphlets. The very name of a priest attaches sus- 
picion on to it the instant he becomes a dabbler in party po- 
litics. The New England priests set themselves up to 
govern the state, and they are falling into contempt for so 
doing. Men who have their farms and their several occu- 
pations to follow, and have a common interest with their 
neighbours in the public prosperity and tranquillity of their 
country, neither want nor choose to be told by a priest who 
they shall vote for, nor how they shall conduct, their tempo- 
ral concerns. 

The cry of the priests, that the Church is in danger, is the 
cry of men who do not understand the interest of their own 
craft, for instead of exciting alarms and apprehensions for 
its safety, as they expect it Excites suspicion that the foun- 
dation is not sound, and that it is necessary to take down 
and build it on a surer foundation. Nobody fears for the 
safety of a mountain, but a hillock of sand may be washed 
away! Blow then, O ye priests, "the Trumpet in Zion," 
for the Hillock is in danger. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



REMARKS ON A PASSAGE OF PAUL IN THE 9TH CHAPTER 
OF ROMANS, 18TH VERSE, AND FOLLOWING. 

ADDRESSED TO THE MINISTERS OF THE CALVINISTIC CHURCH. 



Paul, in speaking of God, says, " Therefore hath he mercy 
on whom he will have mercy, and on whom he will he 



62 



REMARKS ON A PASSAGE OF PAUL. 



hardeneth. — Thou wilt then say, why doth be yet find fault? 
for who hath resisted his will?- — Nay, but who art thou, O 
man, that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed, say 
to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? Hath 
not the potter power over the clay of the same lump, to 
make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?" 

I shall leave it to Calvinists and Universalis to wrangle 
about these expressions, and to oppose or corroborate them, 
by other passages from other books of the Old or New Tes- 
tament. I shall go to the root at once, and say, that the whole 
passage is presumption and nonsense. Presumption, be- 
cause it pretends to know the private mind of God: and 
nonsense, because the cases it states, as parallel cases, have 
no parallel in them, and are opposite cases. 

The first expression says, " therefore hath he (God) mercy 
, on whom he will have mere}', and whom he will he harden- 
eth." As this is ascribing to the attribute of God's power, 
at the expence of the attribute of his justice, I, as a believer 
in the justice of God, disbelieve the assertion of Paul. The 
Predestinariaus, of which the loquacious Paul was one, ap- 
pear to acknowledge but one attribute in God, that of 
power, which may not improperly be called the physical 
attribute. The Deists, in addition to this, believe in his 
moral attributes, those of justice and goodness. 

In the next verses, Paul gets himself into what iD vulgar 
life is called, a hobble, and he tries to get out of it by non- 
sense and sophistry; for having committed himself by say- 
ing, that " God bath mercy on whom he will have mercy, 
and whom he will he hardeneth," he felt the difficulty he 
was in, and the objections that would be made, which he 
anticipates, by saying, ''Thou wilt say then unto me, Why 
doth he (God) yet find fault? for who hath resisted his will? 
Nay, but, O man, who art thou, that repliest against God !" 
This is neither answering the question, nor explaining the case. 
It is down right quibbling and shuffling off the question, and 
the proper retort upon him would have been, " Nay, 
but who art thou presumptuous Paul, that puttest thyself in 
God's place!" Paul, however, goes on and says, "Shall the 
thing formed, say to him that formed it, why hast thou 
made me thus?" Yes, if the thing felt itself hurt, and could 
speak, it would say it. But as pots and pans have not the 
faculty of speech, the supposition of such things speaking, is 
putting nonsense in the place of argument, and is too ridicu- 
lous even to admit of apology. It shews to what wretched 
shifts sophistry will resort. 

Paul, however, dashes on, and the more he tries to rea- 



REMARKS ON A PASSAGE OF PAUL. 



63 



son the more he involves himself, and the more ridiculous 
he appears. " Hath not, says he, the potter power over the 
clay of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honour, and 
another unto dishonour?" In this metaphor, and a most 
wretched one it is, Paul makes the potter to represent God; 
the lump of clay , the whole human race; the vessels unto 
honour, those souls " on whom he hath mercy because he 
will have mercy;" and the vessels unto dishonour, those 
souls, " whom he hardeneth (for damnation) because he will 
harden them." The metaphor is false in every oue of its 
points, and if it admits of any meaning or conclusion, it 
is the reverse of what Paul intended and the Calvinists un- 
derstand. 

lu the first place, a potter doth not, because he cannot, 
make vessels of different qualities, from the same lump of 
clay; he cannot make a fine china bowl, intended to orna- 
ment a side-board, from the same lump of clay that he 
makes a coarse pan, intended for a close stool. The potter 
selects his clays for different uses, according' to their diffe- 
rent qualities, and degrees of fineness and goodness. Paul 
might as well talk of making gun-flints from the same stick 
of wood of which the gun-stock is made, as of making 
china bowls from the same lump of clay of which are made 
common earlhen pots and pans. Paul could hot have hit 
upon a more unfortunate metaphor for his purpose, than 
this of the potter and the clay ; for if any inference is to fol- 
low from it, as a metaphor, it is, that as the potter selects 
his clay for different kinds of vessels, according to the diffe- 
rent qualities and degrees of fineness and goodness in the clay, 
so God selects for future happiness, those among mankind 
who excel in purity and good life, which is the reverse of 
predestination. 

Iu the second place, there is no comparison between the 
souls of men, and vessels made of clay; and, therefore, to 
put one to represent the other is a false position. The ves- 
sels, or the clay they are made from, are insensible of honour 
or dishonour. They neither suffer nor enjoy. The clay is 
not punished, that serves the purpose of a close-stool, nor is 
the finer sort rendered happy that is made up into a punch- 
bowl. The potter violates no principle of justice in the dif- 
ferent uses to which he puts his different clays; for he selects 
as an artist, not as a moral judge; and the materials he 
works upon know nothing, and feel nothing, of his mercy 
or his wrath. Mercy or wrath would make a potter appear 
ridiculous, when bestowed upon his clay. He might kick 
some of his pots to" pieces. 



\ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



64 



021 898 630 4 

REMARKS ON A" PASSa GE OF PAUL. 



But the case is quite different with man, either in this 
world or the next. He is a being" sensible of. misery as well 
as of happiness, and therefore Paul argues like an unfeeling 
idiot, when he compares man to clay ou a potter's wheel, 
or to vessels made therefrom; and with respect to God, it is 
an offence to his attributes of justice, goodnes, and wisdom, 
to suppose he would treat the choicest work of creation like 
inanimate and insensible clay. If Paul believed that God 
made man after his own image, he dishonours it, by making 
that image, and a brick-bat to be alike. 

The absurd and impious doctrine of predestination, a doc- 
trine destructive of morals, would never have been thought 
of, bad it not been for sOme stupid passages in the Bible, which 
priestcraft at first, and ignorance have since imposed upon 
maukind as revelation. Nonsense ought to be treated as non- 
sense, wherever it be found; and had this been done, in the 
rational manner it ought to be done, instead of intimating 
and mincing the matter, as has been too much the case, the 
nonsense and false doctrine of the Bible, with all the aid 
that priestcraft can give, could never have stood their ground 
against the divine reason that God has given to man. 

Doctor Franklin gives a remarkable instance of the truth 
of this, in an account of bis life, written by himself. He 
was in London at the time of which he speaks. "Some 
volumes, says he, against Deism, fell into my hands. They 
were said to be the substance of Sermons preached at Boyle's 
Lectures. It happened that they produced on me an effect 
precisely the reverse of what was intended by the writers; 
for the arguments of the Deists, which were cited in order 
to be refuted, appeared to me more forcible than the refuta- 
tion itself. In a word I soon became a perfect Deist." — N. 
York edition of Franklin's Life, page 93. 

All America, and more than all America, knows Franklin. 
His life was devoted to the good and improvement of man. 
Let, then, those who profess a different creed, imitate his 
virtues, and excel him if they can. 

THOMAS PAINE. 



THE END. 



Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 84, Fleet Street. 



